


The Boy Who Found Fear At Last

by Kate - Kaylin - Kira (Saphie), Kate_Anders, Kaylin and Kira (Saphie), Saphie



Series: The Guardian of Screwing Up [5]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Dark!Jack, Gen, Psychological Horror, Stockholm Syndrome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-03
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:58:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 101,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphie/pseuds/Kate%20-%20Kaylin%20-%20Kira, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Anders/pseuds/Kate_Anders, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphie/pseuds/Kaylin%20and%20Kira, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphie/pseuds/Saphie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An endless maze of nightmares, a locket that won’t open, and mysterious visions of a boy who glows like starlight - Jack Frost is forced to contend with all of these things after a search for what happened to his mother and sister goes horribly awry. The key to Jack’s salvation may lie in the past of one Kozmotis Pitchiner - a past Jack is forced to learn about whether he likes it or not. Can Jack use new-found knowledge of Pitch’s past to escape or will Pitch’s latest terrible scheme cause him to be consumed by the dark? [FIC CURRENTLY ON HIATUS. Working on some other stuff for a while]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For newcomers to the “Guardian of Screwing Up” series, it’s best read the following way:
> 
> 1\. Snowbird  
> 2\. The Frost Spirit and the Honey Tree  
> 3\. The King of Cold Mountain  
> 4\. The Boy Who Found Fear At Last
> 
> There might be a oneshot we toss in taking place between TKoCM and TBWFFAL, but it’s not written yet and is just a bit of funny fluff. For those that want to skip previous stories, all you really need to know is that Anansi the Spider has joined the Guardians after a long time of working for Manny behind the scenes, Jack and Bunny have cemented their friendship, Jack and Tooth possibly have flirty feelings for each other, and Jack has definitely developed as a Guardian to be a bit more level-headed, responsible, and wise.
> 
> Trigger Warnings: While there will be some dark moments in later fics, this fic is undoubtedly the darkest in the series. It will contain quite a few dark themes, involving physical/psychological abuse and Stockholm’s syndrome, isolation/loneliness, mental illness, and psychological mind-borkery. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, so if you find those things to be triggering, it may not be the story for you. However, we’re big fans of showing how people overcome horrible things, so it won’t be all darkness, all the time. This isn’t a character torture fic, it’s a fic about someone fighting their way free from the dark. 
> 
> Basically, this is our version of the Dark!Jack concept and we plan to make it a bit different than some might expect. For those that don’t think they’ll have problems with it, we hope you enjoy the ride.

“Is it scary?” 

“It’s not scary.”

“It looks scary.”

“It’s not scary.”

“I’m not watching it if it’s scary.”

Jamie, eleven-years-old and as normal a child as any - aside from his choice in best friends - aimed his most deadpan stare at the centuries-old eternally teenage frost spirit who regularly charged into battle against the stuff of literal nightmares, but was presently balking at the prospect of watching a movie with the word “skeleton” in the title.

“It’s not scary,” Jamie insisted. “It’s really, really hokey, I promise. It doesn’t look realistic at all.”

Jack pressed his lips together, hmm-ing in deep thought. “Okay,” he relented. “Only if it’s fake-scary rather than real scary.”

“How is it you can face down the King of Nightmares and scary gribblies in the dark but you can’t stomach a scary movie?”

“Pitch is nowhere near as scary as some of these movies. I tried to watch that clay-ey one, Coraline?” Jack shook his head, eyes wide with terror. “Too scary.”

“That’s not even really a horror movie. I mean, it is a horror movie, but it’s stop-motion animated, it’s not meant to be really scary like The Exorcist.”

“She wanted to replace her eyes with buttons. _Buttons_ , Jamie.”

“Okay, well, this one isn’t really scary. It’s funny. It’s making fun of old sci fi and rubber monster horror movies.”

Jack looked at the promo image on the screen of the laptop. “It says there’s a skeleton in it.”

“It’s a really stupid-looking prop skeleton.”

“It’s got the word cadaver in the title.”

“ _Cadavra_. It’s a made up name.”

“This movie doesn’t have color.”

“Now you’re just messing with me. There’s no way you have problems with black and white movies when you’ve been around longer than movies have even _existed_.”

Jack’s resulting grin made Jamie bean him in the face with a pillow before returning to his laptop to start the movie.  

“So it...” Jack scratched his head, looking at the apparatus. “You play it on your computer and it plays it on the TV the same time?”

“Mm hmm. Through that cord there. HDMI.”

Jack whistled low as Jamie finished setting the movie up. “I remember back when I thought internal combustion engines were as good as it was gonna get. Now it’s all computers and cellphones and the talkies are mostly in color.”  

Jamie scooted back from hanging half off the bed to lie on it fully. “Move over, gramps, so we can start watching our talky.”

Jamie had gotten taller in the last few years, so they had to sprawl across his bed diagonally to both had room to stretch their legs. Getting taller came with things like being eleven.

“Jamie, who are you talking to?” Mrs. Bennett called from downstairs.

“Jack Frost, Mom,” Jamie called back, eyes fixed on the screen as the movie began. Jack thought he heard a slight sigh through the floorboards. The mortal boy and the frost spirit looked at each other, snickered, and returned their attention to the movie.

“That’s a lot of skulls.”

“Yep.”

“That is a whole lot of skulls.”

“Uh huh.”

“Each of those skulls had a tongue in it. And could sing once.”

“What kind of songs do you hear rubber tongues singing? Because those skulls are rubber.”

Something buzzed. Jack looked up, confused, but Jamie just reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. The movie played on as he flipped the phone’s keyboard open, tapped in a quick response, then flipped it shut and slipped it back into his pocket.

Jack hadn’t had a moment to concentrate on the movie before Jamie’s phone buzzed again. In an instant it was out, Jamie tapping away on it. Jack leaned over his shoulder to get a look at the phone, and Jamie looked at him with a slight frown.

“Do you mind?”

“Nope.”

“Then maybe you could stop trying to read my messages?”

“Why, what’s so private about ‘hey’ from Cupcake?”

“Argh!” Jamie hunched around his phone, hiding it from Jack’s view. Jack just laughed and played at trying to sneak another peek at the phone.

“Come on, what’s to be embarrassed about? It’s just Cupcake. It’s not like she’s asking you out to the Sadie Hawkins or anything.”

The expression on Jamie’s face right then, his lips puckered together and his expression awkward, was more telling than words could be.

“Or is she asking you out to the Sadie Hawkins?”

Jamie shook his head.

“Or maybe you’re _hoping_ she’ll ask you out to the Sadie Hawkins.”

“Look, I don’t even know what a Sadie Hawkins is, but I’m guessing you’re talking about a dance.”

“It’s a dance where the girls ask the boys.”

“That’s...just a dance. Nobody cares who asks who anymore.” Jamie rolled his eyes at Jack’s antiquated view of courtship. “And yes, there’s a dance coming up and yes, I’m maybe, possibly hoping Cupcake asks me.”

“So why don’t you just ask her?”

“I don’t know,” Jamie said ruefully. “I mean, she’s just...so cool. We hang out, but like . . . she’s a grade above me and she totally kills the ropes in gym class. And one time, I saw her knock a kid out with one punch when he was beating up another kid.” Jamie’s eyes were wide and impressed. “She made him eat dirt. He was so embarrassed he got beat up by a girl he didn’t even tell on her. She got there before even I could try to help.”

“Yes, she’s a very cool girl,” Jack agreed, grinning his amusement. “And?” 

“What if she doesn’t think I’m cool enough?”

“Oh yeah, because standing up to the Bogeyman multiple times isn’t cool at all,” Jack deadpanned.

"But she only saw the once and we were both little kids then."

“Little kids!” Jack laughed. “So what are you now?"

"Uh, preteens? Duh?"

Jack started to laugh - but the laugh fell quiet as he realized Jamie was right.

Jamie rolled his eyes. “We can’t all be 300 years old, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to be a kid forever.”

He was flippant, but the observation cut deep into Jack’s brain. Just three years ago, Jamie had been eight. In less time than that, he’d be thirteen.

Jamie’s childhood was slipping away.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than spy on my messages anyway?” Jamie asked, only mildly cagey, pushing Jack with a brotherly nudge. “Seriously, there’s _no_ Guardian business more pressing now than watching bad movies and reading my texts?”

Jack pulled himself back to the moment. “Actually, North, Bunny, Sandy, and Anansi are fighting something right now. It feeds on the life force of children, though, so they thought it was safe if I sat this one out, just in case. Tooth, too. She started doing what she does when she was a teenager, so we’re both out for the count.” Jack shrugged. “But her work is a lot more...worky than mine.” He grinned, ruffling Jamie’s hair. “A Guardian of Fun’s work is much less taxing. And sometimes it’s fun to tease your friends about their extremely obvious crushes. So are you gonna ask her out, or would you rather go another round against the Boogeyman first?”

Jamie blushed fiercely. “Jeeze! Let’s just watch the movie, okay?”

Jack tried to watch and even made himself laugh at the parts that seemed appropriate but his mind was elsewhere.

Jamie was growing up. Right now, he was like a little brother to Jack, but it couldn’t stay that way forever. He couldn’t still be a little brother when he was a father or a grandfather, could he? As far as family went, he still had the memories of his little sister and for a while they’d had a chance to grow up together, but now she was gone, and he never got to see what she’d grown up into.

It was a question that had niggled at him for quite some time now, the question of what had happened to his sister after he died, but he’d always had things - and people - to distract him from the past by making him focus on the present.

But Jamie was growing up and that meant someday he’d be gone, too.

The thought of that made him focus on what was already gone.

Which was why, when the movie was over, Jack Frost could be found in the Burgess Public Library, attempting to use a microfiche.

It was difficult. For one, he didn’t really know what he was even looking for and two, he’d had enough trouble figuring out how to turn it on let alone work the little knobs, and thirdly, it was very easy to overshoot and fly past what he was trying to read.

It was a fairly useless endeavor. Very little had survived from the time his family had been alive and what little there was had no mention of them. Nobody had thought enough of a widowed midwife survived by only one of her two children to record much about either.

An hour of fumbling with the library equipment got him birth dates, death dates, and grave sites. Each life summed up by a couple dates and a headstone. Those little numbers meant nothing.

It wasn’t enough to know them. It wasn’t enough for anything.

Nobody had known they’d be important to someone, three hundred years after he’d lost his chance to ever know them again.

* * *

 

Staring into the pond didn’t produce any new answers for Jack. He sighed as he stared at the moon’s reflection, mirror-perfect in the still water. 

“I guess you’re probably watching the others fighting the whatsit right now, huh?” he asked. His voice sounded very loud in the stillness, but probably not loud enough to reach all the way to the moon. Manny, as usual, said nothing.

“Or maybe you’re staring straight at me and still not saying anything,” he went on, bitterness creeping into his voice.

He fell silent for a while, sitting at the edge of the pond where he’d died, where his sister had lived - a whole life he _could_ have seen, could have kept alive in his memories, but hadn’t known to.

Would it have hurt more to have watched her live without him than it did to know that he’d missed the chance to? Jack’s grip tightened on his staff, growing angry as he realized it didn’t matter. Manny had decided which experience he was going to have.

“And you still won’t even tell me why.”

The staff’s rough wood bit into his palms.

“I could keep on asking, but at this point, that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? I know what you’ll say.” He exhaled sharply, his lip quivering as he frowned up at the moon. “Nothing.”

He waited a moment longer, hoping against hope that Manny would say something, anything - but the moon shone silently on.

“You made me,” said Jack, feeling eerie echoing himself. “Maybe not from scratch, but you made me what I am now - it took you three hundred years to tell me why. Do I have to wait three hundred more years for you to tell me why it took you so long?”

Silence. Jack sighed, and his head sagged.

His eyelids were heavy. Possibly all the studying he’d done had wearied him, or maybe it was the emotional backlash of addressing the family he’d never fully know again, but he felt drained.

Maybe it was just that he was in Pennsylvania and it was the dead of summer. Summer in the northern hemisphere always made him sleepy, even when it cooled down at night.

With a sigh, he rose, pushing himself by tiptoe into the air, to rest on a tree branch overhanging the water. He was asleep in a minute, as seamlessly as if Sandy had come by to pay him a visit.

* * *

 

But it wasn’t a golden stream of dreamsand that left a gift for him, precariously balanced in the tree branches above his head in the pre-dawn light. 

The clouds covering the moon broke, and a single moonbeam stretched out from the horizon toward the sleeping frost spirit, like an apologetic hand. An early-awakening sparrow took flight, it’s wings briefly tossing the moon’s fading light away from Jack’s face and up onto the gift in the branches. The light flickered, like someone doing a double-take before a candle, and refocused itself on the gift.

Just as the moon had nearly set, the light suddenly became very bright, spilling over Jack as if Manny was about to speak, about to wake Jack up.

_Jack--_

But before the words could be completed, the Moon dropped below the horizon and the sun’s rays scoured the land of its paler cousin’s light. The birds began to sing their morning greetings, as Jack was left to discover his new gift on his own.

* * *

 

“Muh?” 

Jack opened his eyes and looked around blearily in the morning light. That was the other thing he tended to forget about summers: while there were more than a few birds around when Jack brought the snow to town, there were so many more when it was warm, and they were so very noisy.

He sat up slowly, covering a yawn with his hand and then stretching both upward over his head until it felt like his bones would crack. Well, it’d been a good nap, at least. He got a whiff of a strange smell - something like licorice, but the wind carried it away.

Something brushed against his knuckles, something too smooth to be part of the tree. He looked up just in time to take the edge of something to the face.

“Ow!”

The Whatever bounced off of Jack’s head and fell into the grass below.

Eyebrows furrowed, Jack plucked his staff out of the branches near his hand and leaped out of the tree, landing lightly on the ground below.

Something glittered bright and silver in the grass.

Jack looked around to see who might have left it there before he touched it. Whoever it was had to have been able to fly, because it hadn’t been there when he went to sleep. He would’ve been woken by anyone climbing up the tree.  He saw neither hair nor hide of who it could have been.

Slowly, Jack reached down into the grass and picked up the object.

It was a cylindrical box, edged with silver. On its round surface, little silver panels were set in odd shapes that looked like phases of the moon. He fiddled with them for a moment, and found that they pressed into the box under his fingers - once he pulled back, though, each face had changed to a different moonphase.

There were very faint seams on the box, but when Jack pried at them, they didn’t open - stuck in place by the various phases of the moon.

A puzzle box! Jack laughed out loud. Not only had Manny sent him a gift, he’d made it a fun one. Sure it meant a little longer to wait for answers, but Jack could wait indefinitely if he was having fun doing it. Especially when it meant that Manny wanted to have fun with him.

He hung from the branch upside down, fiddling with the box, his staff hung from the branch by its crook next to him. For a while nothing happened, but eventually, when he thought to alternate waxing crescents with full moons, the lines on the box deepened and it opened with a noise like frost settling. Jack only had time to grab his staff before the world blurred around him.

The box was closed in his hands again when everything stopped.

The puzzle box had brought him to someone’s living room. 

Jack landed on the couch in front of a coffee table strewn with magazines and actual coffee stains. The TV in front of him was muted. Oprah’s audience was awfully (and silently) excited about something on it.

The book lying on the table caught Jack’s eye. The title proclaimed in bold blue print “When Life Hands you Lessons: Getting Past your Past” superimposed over a pitcher of lemonade.

Jack picked up the book and flipped it open to a dog-eared page. A line mid-page caught his eye: “Don't be afraid of your emotional journey - embrace it! Throw yourself into the experience without fear of the end result. Feel your feelings without fear of feeling them. Let the journey be your destination, and you will arrive at a truer awareness of yourself.”

“Wow,” said Jack, genuinely impressed, having never read a self-help book before, or even watched many shows that weren’t cartoons. “That’s pretty deep.”

A child’s voice called from down the hall - “Did you say something, Dad?”

Jack hastily tucked the book into the pocket of his hoodie, picked up his staff from the floor, and went back to work on the puzzle box.

This time, a straight line of half-moons widened another crack in the box, and it opened with a snap like icicles cracking off and falling. The living room blurred around Jack.

This time, instead of being greeted by something indoors, he was treated to the sound of bright, joyful laughter. It was rhythmic like the pitter-patter of rain - which was falling all around him. It was pleasant, that mild temperature between cool and lukewarm, and the air smelled clean and green. Even though the sky here was gray, the rain somehow made all the other colors around him brighter by contrast. The green of the grass and the leaves and the yellows, reds, and blues of the flowers might as well have been inked, rather than grown.

Jack took to the air, flying in between the trees until the laughter grew louder.

Pushing aside some leafy branches, Jack saw movement - mainly splashing.

The splashers were women the color of rain clouds. Their skin ranged from pearly silver to the near-black of thunderclouds, and it was quite easy for Jack to see a lot of skin, what with the transparency of their rain-soaked togas. They were playing in the rain like children, splashing in puddles, spinning and dancing, laughing in voices that echoed through the mountains. A bottle was being passed between them. Jack had an instant to observe their joy - and a lot of barely-concealed body parts - before the nearest noticed him and screamed.

“Whoa! Sorry!” Jack yelled, slapping a hand over his eyes as a few of the others screeched. “Didn’t mean to interrupt. Sorry, ladies, I’m on a spiritual journey. You guys look like you’re having fun, though, don’t let me get in the way of your good time.”

Putting his hand over his eyes was entirely for their benefit. In general, he’d never really gotten the big deal with nudity. Whether it was buried under ten layers of clothing or emblazoned on billboards to sell things, it had always seemed to him that people had never really gotten their attitude towards it _right_ in the last three hundred years. It wasn’t a commodity, but it wasn’t shameful, either.

Besides, he appreciated the fun they were having more than anything else. Because they _were_ having fun. They were simply existing, enjoying themselves in their element, and there was nothing about them for Jack to assume was meant for anyone else, not even for each other.

Still, they hadn’t expected his arrival and it was only polite he avert his eyes.

The Nysiads had stopped screaming as he covered his eyes, and none of them had run. One of them was even laughing, and her laughter broke the ice on her sisters’ laughter as well.

“Well well, the Guardian of Fun drops in on _our_ fun!” said the one nearest to him, her voice only slightly slurred. Jack heard footsteps coming closer, and peeked through his fingers to see a pale grey face with eyes the blue-black of stormclouds low on the horizon. “You can open your eyes, Jack Frost. We’ve heard a lot about you.”

Enough that they were all relaxed when Jack opened his eyes. The one nearest to him held the bottle.

Jack grinned, dropping his hand. They were all beautiful, but there was much more he found to appreciate in their joyful smiles, the glint of mischief in their eyes, than in staring at their bodies.

“So, I’m not sure why I’m here, but I’m on a spiritual journey and my magic puzzle-box thingy brought me here.”

“Spiritual journey in what?” called another of the Nysiads. “You’re already a pro at water-based fun.”

“Maybe he has to learn to branch out into other states of being?” suggested another one. The Nysiads exchanged glances that, while still underscored by a current of joyful laughter, were surprisingly thoughtful. “Snow and rain are made of the same substance, but one plays very differently in each.”

A slate-grey Nysiad with pearly-sheened hair jumped from a tree branch into a puddle, showering her sisters with another splash of fallen rain. “We need more clues!” she called, as if Jack’s spiritual journey was a delightful game. “What have you learned so far?”

“Uh -” Jack reached into the pocket of his hoodie, touching the book that was there. “Well, I kinda just started, but so far, I learned that this is an emotional journey, and I shouldn’t be afraid of it. So is there maybe a book or a, uh, I don’t know, significant carving out here I should try to read from?”

The Nysiads all burst out laughing.

“No books out here!” one squealed, whipping her hair so that her sisters were splashed with water.

“Obviously part of your emotional journey is to learn to bring us more fun,” said the nearby Nysiad, taking a swig from the bottle in her hands. She giggled again and swayed in place when she’d finished drinking. “I have deduced it. From facts.”

“Share enough that _we_ can deduce like that,” one of her sisters laughed, taking the bottle from her. “Jack, come and play with us until we figure out what lesson you’re supposed to learn.”

Well, the book had said to throw himself into the journey. The book hadn’t said the journey had to be all fear and anguish, though.

“Don’t mind if I do,” said Jack, jumping into the nearest puddle.

They splashed and shrieked and passed the bottle around. When it reached Jack, he shrugged, and joined them. Hey, the puzzle box brought him here for a reason, right? Holding back probably wasn’t the point of the whole thing.

Their play took them over and around the mountains, the rain following the Nysiads wherever they went, so that Jack took off his hoodie and wrapped it around his book to leave under a thick tree when he realized it was getting damp. They carried on, bringing the rain across the mountains. There didn’t seem to be purpose in the direction the Nysiads played, but most of the mountains got watered in the process.

After enough from the bottle, Jack could barely control his laughter. He was outright giggling as he and the Nysiads collapsed beneath the trees, letting the rain drip down on their faces through the branches.

He hadn’t had this much fun in ages. That wasn’t from a dearth of fun, either, but the Nysiads had hearts as light as the clouds that followed them around. They knew how to live completely in each moment, letting their joy drive them forward. As much as he loved the Guardians, as much as he cared about Jamie, it was rare he met others that could manage to do that as well as he could. They were also incredibly kind, in a way that seemed to come to them easily.   

“Man,” he said, then stopped to giggle as the trees seemed to spin above him - maybe because of the drink, maybe because of all the spinning he’d been doing. It had been good spinning - arm-in-arm with the Nysiad who was now petting his hair, as he rested his head against her stomach. “I never knew I could have so much fun above freezing.”

“Lesson: learned!” one of the Nysiads - Eriphia, he thought her name was - crowed.

Jack giggled. The others giggled too, but less because they were inebriated, and more possibly because Jack’s laughter was infectious.

He wiped a tear of laughter from his eye, flicking it away with the rain. “Why didn’t I stop by and visit you ladies sooner?” he wondered, as the rain dripped on his face. He wiped it away, clearing space for new drops to fall. _I’m never going to associate rain on my face with anything but this again,_ he thought, and considered that before, he’d never been comfortable with the feeling of being wet, and for a very good reason.

“Well, we’re glad you did,” said Cisseis, who was delicately running her fingers through his hair. “You’re a sweet little soul, Jack Frost.”

“You can come play with us in the rain anytime,” added Ambrosia.

“Thanks,” said Jack, warmth filling his heart at having made new friends. “You guys are the _best._ I mean, that, the _best._ You’re the first friends I’ve made since...since the Guardians, I guess! And they were my first friends!” He laughed again, as some of the Nysiads cooed in sympathy. “It’s like, I went so long without making any friends, and now they’re just falling into my lap - or, uh, I’m falling into theirs, I guess.”

They all laughed at that.

“Maybe that’s your lesson,” Polymno suggested. “To make friends on your journey.”

“Maybe,” agreed Jack. But that still didn’t seem to apply to his original reason for wanting answers in the first place. “Maybe Manny wants me to know that if I keep moving forward, there will be new friends in the future! New people I can care about.” He cleared more rain from his face again. “Or maybe he just wanted me to be able to enjoy the rain on my face, without thinking of...of other stuff.”

He veered away from mention of his drowning, feeling even as he did that it was a little too late. But Cisseis sighed thoughtfully beneath him, and when Erato spoke, her voice was reminiscent, but not sad.

“That’s important,” she said, taking a swig from the bottle before dropping her hand to the damp grass again. “Moving on - that’s a lesson we learned once, a long time before we heard of you.”

“Before you were a mortal boy who could only _dream_ of dancing half-naked in the rain with beautiful nymphs,” said Eriphia, and for the first time in his whole day of doing just that, Jack blushed.

“Did you know, we used to go by another name?” said Erato, clearly not finished with her reminiscing. “We used to be the Hyades, when we didn't dance in the rain - we wept it.”

Jack’s drunken heart clenched at the thought of the playful Nysiads weeping a rainstorm. “That’s so sad,” he said. “That’s the saddest thing I’ve heard in years.”

“I _know!”_ called Pedile, throwing her hands in the air. “It was _so_ sad.”

“The saddest,” echoed Nysa.

“We were sad for _so long,”_ said Cisseis, holding her hands out as if to illustrate the age of time of their sadness. “Our brother Hyas was killed in a hunting accident, and we felt like we’d never be happy again.”

“When we were mortal, our tears fell like rain, and so we became nymphs of the rain, and it fell as our tears,” said Bromia, picking up the tale. “So we went on as we had done in mortal life, weeping over the mountains of Nysa. For years, and years, and years -”

“And you know, Jack, how difficult it is for things of our kind to change,” said Erato. “But even we couldn’t go on weeping forever.”

“Yes, grieving is hard work,” agreed Ambrosia, “and sorrow is _so_ hard to maintain when the world just keeps spinning on, the grass keeps growing, children keep laughing far away -”

“So in time, we came to want more from our eternity than to always be in sorrow,” said Coronis. “But at the same time, we wanted to remember our brother. And we wanted the world to remember him.”

“So what did you do?” Jack asked thoughtfully, letting their words wash over him like the rain that was falling down on them all.

As one, the Nysiads lifted their hands, and parted the rain clouds.

The stars shone down from the deep blue sky, evening sliding over them unseen beyond the rain clouds.

“You see, there?” said Cisseis, pointing to a cluster of stars above them. “That is what we did.”

“You...uh...” Jack squinted, trying to figure out what they meant by pointing. “...help me out here?”  

“We gave our grief to the staaaaars,” said Eriphia, wiggling her fingers at the clouds. She burst into laughter, as if relieved all over again to be able to laugh once more. Moonlight started to peek around the edges of the hole in the clouds but then the Nysiads closed it up again.

“Those stars had no name, so we gave them ours,” said Pedile. “We had been the Hyades, weeping over Hyas, but we let something else be monument to our brother, something other than our lives.”

“He wouldn’t have wanted us to live our lives mourning him,” said Bromia. “He would have wanted us to _have_ lives. Like, who spends their entire lives in mourning, anyway? If all you do is relive death, can it be called a life?”

“Deep,” said Polymno. Bromia passed her the bottle.

“Now we are the Nysiads,” said Cisseis, “and sometimes, we look to the Hyades, and remember. Once in a while, we are sad a little. But we can remember, now, without being sad all the time.”

“So...you let go of the past,” said Jack slowly. “Without forgetting someone you cared about. You were able to do both.”

Sobriety was starting to come back in full force and with it came a new clarity. Was that what Manny was trying to tell him? Honor his family but move on? Maybe someday he'd have to do that with Jamie, too.

Excitement started to rise up in his gut over possibly having learned the lesson.

“I think that’s it. I think that’s what Manny was trying to help me understand! The book said something about how how yesterday is the past and that’s why it doesn’t last, and something about how our eyes are in the front of our heads because you’re supposed to move forward.”

With that, he sat and scrambled for his staff, picking it up from where he’d left it lying in the grass. Bouncing excitedly in place, he said. “I need to go back to the puzzle box!”

“Yay,” Coronis cheered. “Puzzle box!”

“What puzzle box?” whispered Pedile. Arsinoe shrugged.

Jack bounced in place. “I left it with my hoodie. C’mon!”

He bounded off on a breeze and the Nysiads rose to follow him. They ran over the mountains, back to where they’d begun their play several hours ago, where Jack’s hoodie and the book inside it still waited. The puzzle box still sat next to them, speckled with rainwater.

The Nysiads “ooh’d” as Jack picked it up. He held it out to them eagerly, as they gathered around to look at the ornately carved toy.

“The Man in the Moon left it for me,” he said. “It brought me to this house, where I got this book -” he pulled the book out of his hoodie, and the Nysiads all politely held out their hands to cover it from the rain. “It has all this stuff in it about going on an emotional journey. Listen to this -”

He cleared his throat before he began reading. “Yesterday is the past, and as any child will tell you, the past doesn’t last.” That part sounded a little suspect - what kid ever said that? Jack shrugged it off and moved on. “You can keep your mind on the past all you want, but you’ll never live in it. You’ll never even see it. Our eyes are in the front of our heads because we’re meant to move _forward.”_

The Nysiads glanced at each other, lips pressed together in the polite not-smiles of people who’d read more than a few books and were trying not to tear down the enthusiasm of someone who was still a little green on reading for self-improvement. They chorused a few halfhearted variations on “Lovely,” and “Deep.”

“Yeah,” said Jack, his enthusiasm undeterred. He pulled his hoodie back on, and tucked the book back in the pocket. “I think that might be the biggest part of it, but there still might be more I need to do.”  

He held out his arms.

“Ladies, this is goodbye. Once I figure out the next combination, this thing will magic me away to the next place I need to be. Thank you for the lesson - and for the great day. I’m really glad I met you guys.”

All of them “awwwed” and swarmed in to hug him and kiss him all over his face.

Jack was still grinning as he leaned his staff against his shoulder and started fiddling with the puzzle box again.

The Nysiads started calling out helpful suggestions.

“Try twisting that one sideways.”

“Slide to the left.”

“Slide to the right.”

“Criss-cross.”

Snickers all around.

“Nope, still not working,” said Jack as he fussed with the puzzle box.

“Do a barrel roll!”

“Ooh ooh, build a little fence around it!”

“Now you’re just being silly,” Jack chuckled.

He did try tilting it slightly, though, and that meant one of the tiles slid into what was apparently the perfect configuration.

The last thing he heard before being whisked away was the Nysiads cheering at his success.

The last thing the Nysiads heard as Jack disappeared was a sound less like the whirling of a magic portal, and more like something tearing apart from the fabric of the universe and fluttering away.

Their cheers died away into sudden silence. The sisters glanced at each other, mouths open in surprise as the sound died away.

Bromia broke the silence - “Was it supposed to sound like that?”

* * *

 

The journey went on, more quickly this time, as Jack read more of the book and fell into the rhythm of journey and lesson. 

There was Kyöpelinvuori, where he had some long riddle games with the witches there, and Jack learned it was okay to have mixed feelings on the important things, that nothing was ever truly black and white when it came to the past. (“The feelings you feel are real, no matter how complicated they are,” the book said.)

A two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn, where he played an overlong game of monopoly with the kids who lived there. The eight year old boy turned out to be quite the budding young capitalist, and at the end of the hour, his older sister flipped the board in frustration. (“Personal gain should never be prioritized at the expense of one’s relationship with loved ones in the search for true success.”)

An Auto Shop. (“Nothing ever stays perfect. Everything breaks sometime, what matters is that you fix it!”) The peak of Mount Fuji. (“Solitude doesn’t always have to mean loneliness. Sometimes the best you you can be is the you that’s you when you’re just alone with you.” ). Buckingham Palace. (Jack had no clue on this one but as always, he enjoyed the guys in the funny hats.)

By the time Jack had cycled through two days’ worth of travel (strangely, for a puzzle from the Man in the Moon, the box always teleported him to somewhere with daylight), the lessons he was learning were starting to become more facetious.

“Okay, I’ve learned I don’t want to be alone on a creepy, windswept rock island with a single leafless tree bearing a lone ripe plum,” said Jack, eyeing the obviously cursed fruit and fiddling with his puzzle box on the alarmingly silent island. He was relieved first when that lesson seemed to suffice, and second when the box brought him somewhere populated.

He landed on a subway platform strewn with midday travellers. The signs were in English, and the murmur of accents around him suggested he was in London again. A small girl with her hand in her mother’s spotted him, and her face burst into a gaping smile of wonder. Jack grinned at her and waved, but before he could do anything else, heard something that drew his attention far away from the little girl - a distant, but loud, roar emanating from deep within the subway.

He glanced around at the adults, but none of them appeared to have heard anything. The little girl looked scared, though, and Jack gave her a reassuring smile. Her mother squeezed the girl's’ hand back, but didn’t look away from her phone, her brow furrowed in deep thought. Jack glanced into the darkness of the subway tunnel, then back to the little girl, who didn’t look entirely reassured. He blew up a snowflake, and with a puff of breath, sent it spinning over to land on the mother’s nose. Instantly she blinked, looked up from her phone with a smile just touched with wonder, and smiled down at her daughter. They were playing patty-cake as Jack took off down the subway tunnel, towards the source of the roar.

The tubes were dangerous, even for a spirit. He listened intently for the sounds of oncoming cars, and more importantly, for the strange sound he’d heard before. It wasn’t quite like a lion, but it was wild and furious. It wasn’t close to the roar of oncoming cars - such as the one coming just then, as Jack flattened himself to the wall and waited for the train to streak by.

In the taillight of the departing train, he saw a hole in the ground beneath the tracks. He quickly blew out a stream of snowflakes over the hole, and they danced upwards on a draft. The train departed, taking the last of the light with it, and Jack felt his way blindly to the hole, feeling the very slight draft coming from it.

An itch at the back of his brain stopped him from jumping in. He’d been down this road before - this road of hasty, impetuous jaunts after underestimated enemies into places unknown. His quest might be taking him somewhere dangerous - and it might be time to get the others to come and help him face it. The book hadn’t said anything about having to go alone when that wasn’t your only option.

The puzzle box shook softly in his pocket, as if encouraging him of his safety. Well, perhaps not his safety. “Safe” wasn’t a state the Guardians sought for themselves very much. Perhaps the box was reassuring him more of his competence.

He couldn’t let fear stop him from getting the truth. Jack jumped through the hole without further hesitation.

He landed on the floor of a dark tunnel, the only light dimly filtering in through the hole above, and started to feel his way along. The wall was slimy, but the only guide he had to move forward by. He iced up the tips of his fingers so he didn’t have to feel the slime whenever he pressed them against it.

He ducked around a corner and saw light ahead.

It was not the kind of light one wanted to see at the end of a dark tunnel. Two beady eyes glowed in the dark like blue flames and a low growl reverberated through the tunnel.

“Whatever or whoever you are,” Jack said quietly, in case the creature in the dark was sentient. “I just need to get through here. I won’t hurt you if you don’t hurt me.”

It lunged at him in the dark. Claws scratched at his hoodie and teeth snapped right in front of his face,  as the weight of the beast behind them knocked him backward. Jack used the momentum of the lunging creature as to kick it off of him and scrambled to his feet. He blasted in the direction he thought it was, but must have missed. Another roar blared from his left and he was bowled over yet again. This time the teeth managed to get a mouthful of his hood. The creature ripped through his hoodie, scraping the skin underneath. It shook its head furiously, knocking Jack’s head back and forth.

Jack pointed his staff at the beast’s glowing eyes and blasted them with ice. It yelped and let go, backing off into the dark, but now its eyes were closed against the ice and as it fell silent, Jack had no way of knowing where it was.

In the meantime, he had no doubts it could sense where he was by smell.

Still, smell could tell it where Jack was but not where the wall of the tunnel was.

Jack positioned himself just slightly in front of the wall, waiting for it to lunge at him again.

It growled, and its claws scrabbled against the stone. A heavy body thudded towards him. Jack waited until he didn’t dare wait any longer, hands gripping fitfully at his staff, and felt the creature lunge at him again. Once again he rolled back, using his legs to kick the beast off of him, but this time, he brought his staff up and blasted at the monster, slamming it into the tunnel wall hard.

The hideous crunch that followed made Jack cringe, and the pitiful whine that followed after made him feel sick to his stomach.

Then there was silence.

Jack stood completely still in the dark, waiting and listening, his heart thudding in his chest, but no new attack was forthcoming. Rather than stick around, he slowly moved forward in the dark, until he reached the end of the tunnel nearby. He touched the wall there and a massive round door slid away, letting in dim light from beyond.  

Jack looked back to see what he’d fought. A massive black dog lay dead on the ground. It’s fur was an inky black that seemed to suck in the light, and the sight of it made Jack suck in an inadvertent gasp of air.

Even Jack knew the significance of what he was looking at. Myths weren’t immune to the dread the creature caused, and creatures like it were an omen to them as well as to humans, an omen so dire it chilled even Jack to the bone, when his body was chilled already.  

It was a black dog.

A death omen.

Jack looked beyond the tunnel door into the strange twilight that came from nowhere, and saw that it fell on a crossroads. A place where several dirt paths met.

It made sense, given that black dogs often hung around crossroads, though what said roads were doing underground was beyond him.

Jack walked down the dirt path, to where the four roads met.

He'd seen a black dog. He’d _killed_ a black dog. What did that even mean? It was bad enough that a death omen had been waiting for him, but did it mean something even worse to have killed one?

Jack was, metaphorically - and literally - at a crossroads and he had no idea if this meant he should turn back.

But what if this was a test? What if he was meant to overcome fear and move forward? Manny had set these tasks before him, as a way of figuring himself out, of trusting himself enough to discover what he needed to discover about himself and his past.

And he trusted Manny. Despite leaving him alone for all that time, the Man in the Moon had saved his life. He’d made it so Jack had been able to experience a myriad of joys he hadn’t in a mortal life cut short. He’d chosen him as a Guardian, given him a cause he believed in, and a group of friends - new family - that loved him.

He trusted Manny as much as he often resented him. That was why he took that first step down the dirt road in front of him. Somehow, it just felt right to choose that road. Jack deemed his decision reinforced as the other two roads melted away.

He felt compelled to keep walking forward, one foot after another, in a way that was similar to Bunny’s tunnels propelling people along. Jack couldn’t have turned back if he wanted to and it seemed to him that he was somehow moving along at a great distance with comparatively few steps.

His walk finally brought him to a huge doorway. Statues of two knights stood at each side of it, their hands resting on the pommels of their swords. Jack had an intense feeling of foreboding as he stood before them, and knew somehow this was some sort of test. He eyed the swords with apprehension.

His fear was justified as he stepped forward. The knights lifted their swords up and crossed them overhead with a clang. The slits in their helmets suddenly lit up and their deep voices reverberated through Jack’s very being.

**ONLY THE WORTHY MAY ENTER HERE. STEP FORWARD AND BE JUDGED.**

**FEAR NOTHING IF YOU ARE VIRTUOUS. FEAR EVERYTHING IF YOU ARE NOT.**

Jack hope he counted as virtuous. He did brave things, didn’t he? He protected kids, tried his best to be there for his friends, tried his best to be kind. He could only hope that was enough and trust that Manny wouldn’t put him into danger.

Sucking in a deep breath, Jack took a cautious step forward, eying the swords over his head with trepidation. Nothing happened. Taking another step, he felt a strange tingle go through him, but it quickly passed and then he was on the other side of the archway. The knights dropped their swords back to rest in front of them and light in the visors of the knight’s helmets went out.

What lay before him beyond the doorway inspired only awe. It was the ruins of a massive castle that had somehow sunk underground. The same dim light that came from nowhere cast shadows over ever edifice, but Jack could tell that in the light of day, this place had been beautiful once. It’s grey, dingy walls had clearly once been a bright white, and crumbled carvings adorned the walls - what was left of them was lovely. Jack made his way in through the open doors, taking to the air as he looked around. Tattered tapestries adorned the walls, their colors dim and dingy, depicting knights fighting valiant battles and mystical creatures like unicorns and dragons.  

Jack passed by a massive throne room with a white throne stained grey with time, and beyond that was a room that made him gasp aloud.  

In it was a table, a massive round table. Twelve seats sat around it, the wooden chairs now mostly rotten. Names had been etched in them in gold once, but that had mostly worn away. At one end of the table was a massive stone seat, carved with intricate designs. Carved on the wall behind it were words:

 

**THE ANSWERS YOU SEEK LIE HERE. WHOSOEVER SITS IN THIS SEAT WILL BE GIFTED WITH THE SIGHT OR INSIGHT THEY SEEK.**

 

Pretty straightforward.

Jack took a step towards the chair, then stopped.

It was a little _too_ straightforward.

The last time he’d been handed something that was supposed to solve all his problems, it had come at a great cost. Yes, the puzzle box from Tooth’s palace had given him his memories and helped him figure out who he was, but gaining it from Pitch had made the Guardians lose trust in him. It had come closer to killing Bunny than any amount of dangerous other creatures had ever managed. Obsessing over it - and gunning for Pitch - had made him leave Baby Tooth behind to be captured as a hostage. This sort of ease had once very nearly ruined everything - not just for him, but for all of his strange new family, and for the children of the world.

It was never _that_ easy. Life didn’t just magically hand out answers and every action had consequences. That was a lesson that he’d come by the hard way. Sometimes he was rash and still slipped up, but it was still a lesson he’d taken to heart.

He stepped forward and examined the chair more closely, rather than just plopping his butt into the seat.

The puzzle box rattled in the pocket of his hoodie, as if urging him to sit, but he ignored it and pulled aside the rotting cloth that covered the chair. Other words were carved there in a version of English even older than what was carved on the wall.

It took a moment for the translation magic that came with being a Guardian to kick in since the language was so old, but Jack sucked in a deep, horrified breath when they translated. 

 

**WHOSOEVER TAKES THIS SEAT, BE HE STRONG OR BE HE FRAIL,**

**MUST ONLY BE THE ONE WHO IS WORTHY TO SEEK OUT THE HOLY GRAIL.**

**ALL OTHERS WHO DARE TO TAKE THIS SEAT SHALL FIND TO THEIR DISMAY,**

**THAT THEY SHALL BE CAST INTO THE DARK, NEVER AGAIN TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.**

 

The puzzle box rattled even more in his pocket and Jack took it out. The little moons on the top moved around to form jagged words.

**Take the seat and you’ll see into the past. You _are_ worthy, Jack.**

A message from Manny.

A message that couldn’t be true, couldn’t be real.

There were a few things Jack was now sure of about himself. He was a good person, certainly, maybe even a hero sometimes. And maybe, despite all of that silence, Manny cared. That didn’t mean that he was good enough to be worthy of surviving a cursed object like this. Jack didn’t know a lot of mythical history like Bunny or the others but he did know one thing about Arthur’s knights - there was a lot of emphasis on purity, on being virtuous to the point of ludicrousness.

Jack was honest enough with himself to know he was good, but flawed, like many people were. Manny had to know that, too, because one thing Jack knew for sure was that even if the Man in the Moon had said nothing, he had most likely been watching over him for most of his life, and that meant he’d seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Manny probably had a clear picture of who he was even if he’d left him alone during all the time he’d _grown_ into who he was.

This was a trap. This entire thing _had_ to be a trap.

“Oh nonono,” he said to the puzzle box, with it’s possibly-deadly suggestion. “Time to get my butt away from that chair and get it the heck out of here.”

For once, just for once, he’d been wise enough to figure the trap out before he’d tripped it. Carefully, he set the moon puzzle box - something he now knew was quite possibly dangerous - on the round table.

He turned and made a beeline for the door out of the the room. It was probably almost time for him to meet up with Bunny like he’d promised he would a few days ago, before the other Guardian mission. They had an arrangement to play some pranks on a film set.

That was when he heard the clicking. It was the single most ominous sound he’d ever heard in his life. Jack turned back, eyes wide, and saw the puzzle box’s moving parts unfolding to the clicking of the clockwork inside it.

Shadow shapes exploded out of the puzzle box and surged towards him in an overwhelming wave. His staff was ripped from his hand and he was slammed against the floor, the blow knocking the wind out of him. The shadows dragged him violently across the stone, drawing him inexorably towards the foreboding chair. Amidst the shadows dragging him he saw glowing yellow eyes and manes and knew in an instant _exactly_ who was behind all this.

The deafening whinnies of the nightmares sounded in his ears as he was slammed into the chair, into what could only be the Siege Perilous, and restrained there by nightmare sand. There was no need for them to hold him down, though - the minute he touched the seat, nearly every muscle in his body was paralyzed.

The room blurred as a terrifying shape materialized in front of him, a flaming creature in a shape that was just not quite enough like a dragon to calm down his terrified and overactive imagination.  

“Please, I didn’t mean to,” Jack wheezed, still breathless from being slammed into the floor. He was only able to move his mouth, nothing else . “They made me sit here, I’m not trying to -”

The creature interrupted him. In a voice more ancient than even some of his friends, the creature said in tones that sounded like metal scraping against granite:

**YOU. ARE. NOT. WORTHY.**

“I know I’m not, I’m sorry, but I wasn’t trying to sit here, they made me, they made me -” Jack cried out, but the seat of the chair fell out from under him, as a great and terrible wind sucked him into the black void below. Jack clung to the edges of the Siege as hard as he could, but between the nightmares forcing him down and the suction of the void, he knew he wasn’t going to be able to hang on for long.

Jack had the strangest sense that the dark was waiting for him - just for him - and it filled him with more horror than he’d ever felt in his long life.

“I swear, I didn’t mean to sit here, just let me go and I’ll leave!” Jack said, struggling furiously against the nightmares as they plucked at his fingers and lunged into the hole to pull him harder into the swirling dark. “I promise I’ll lea -”

His fingers ffinally slipped and he spun off into the dark.

“--eeaaAAAAUGH!”

The last thing he saw was the light in the eyes of the triumphant night-mares before he was lost to the dark, and lost to a cold greater than any he’d ever felt. For a moment, all he knew was fear and then he knew no more.

* * *

 

It was Fall, and that meant the workshop at the North Pole was in full-swing. North hummed his way through a Stravinsky record while chipping quickly away at an ice sculpture. He hadn’t left his workshop in the two days since returning from his last mission, working straight away on new wonders for the upcoming Christmas. He was having a good streak, still going strong without even the need for a bracing walk around the arctic tundra to clear his head, so deep in his work that he didn’t hear his own name being called until the caller had lost his (admittedly short) patience with North. 

“Wouldja drop the chisel and lend me one of those sad excuses for ears, you bloody yobbo? We’ve got a problem.”

North did indeed drop the chisel, in surprise at finding himself not the only non-elf in the room. “Bunny!” He stood up, clapping the pooka on both shoulders, a gesture that froze Bunny completely for a moment as he tensed up against the contact. “Old friend, you are always welcome, but how many times have I told you to knock?”

“You’ve never had to,” said Bunny, grouchily, but then, North was accustomed to “grouchy” as Bunny’s default state of being. “North, did you hear a word I said?”

“Ah,” North shrugged as he stretched kinks he didn’t have out of his back, then bustled over to one of his workshop cabinets for refreshments. “You know how it is, deadlines coming, inspiration, she is striking - I am getting lost in my work. Fruitcake?”

Bunny glanced at the proffered fruitcake, temporarily distracted, then back at North. “Have you seen Jack lately?”

“Jack Frost!” North exclaimed, always happy to have reason to think of the youngest Guardian. “Jack Frost! Hah! Well it seems if he is coming into my workshop, he is not as determined to get my attention as you. You have asked yeti?”

“We were supposed to do something,” Bunny went on. “We were gonna do a run on the set of some movie. We were gonna steal everyone’s left shoe and put them all on some fruit loop actor’s trailer.”

“Yes, I know, you are friends now! Hope and Fun, playing jokes on the world - is very good thing,” said North, setting down the fruitcake, genuinely pleased but still eager to get back to his deadlines.

Bunny leaped directly over his head, landing on the cabinet before North could set the fruitcake on it. “You’re not hearing me, North. Jack didn’t show.”

The switch flipped in North’s brain, and his expression went from jovial to more than concerned in an instant.

“Not a word from him?” he asked.

Bunny shook his head. “Not a one.”

North put the fruitcake down and picked up his swords.

Minutes later, North and Bunny were waiting by the globe as the aurora signal put out the call to the other Guardians. It only took a few more minutes for Sandy, Tooth, and Anansi to appear, and Jack was notably not with them.

“But Jack never misses a chance to spend time with any of us,” Tooth said, when she’d been brought up to speed.

“Three hundred years of starving for affection will make a boy punctual when it is offered to him,” said Anansi, and each Guardian looked at him with slight consternation, as if to say “well you didn’t exactly offer him any either” without starting the argument of saying it.

“He’s definitely in trouble,” Bunny insisted. He was more highly strung than usual, his movements twitchy with worry. “I tracked his scent to his pond at Burgess, but the scent trail there vanishes completely. If he’d flown away on the wind, I’d still have something to follow him by, but there’s nothing. I’d say he’d vanished completely, if I hadn’t caught a fresher whiff of him in Alberta on the way here.”

“But he _is_ still around?” Tooth asked, darting slightly in place from concern.

“Still around, but leaving no trail to follow.” North nodded, “hmm-”ing over the problem. “Jack does not have that kind of magic - very suspicious. We must track by witnesses, not scent. Maybe he is appearing in places besides Alberta. Let’s go find out.”

“Did you smell anything else at the pond?” Tooth asked Bunny, as the Guardians took off to the sleigh launch caverns. “Any trace of someone that might have taken Jack?”

“I smelled something all right,” said Bunny, wrinkling his nose. “Enough anise to knock out anyone with a half-decent nose for a mile around. I could barely smell Jack beyond it, and that pond reeks of him. Something was covering their tracks, something that knew I’d come looking.”

“Do you think it was Pitch?” Tooth asked, the worry in her voice intensifying as they all fell silent at the question.

Bunny had long since told them all about his concerns over Pitch’s obsession with Jack, since he’d observed that such an obsession existed in their last fight with the Boogeyman years ago in a midwestern American steel foundry. He didn’t say anything as he looked at Tooth, his expression mirroring her concern, then to Anansi.

The spider couldn’t predict the future - not to a science - but he knew and felt the threads of stories in the world in a way that came of expertise as much as of innate ability. He called it “being genre savvy,” whatever that meant.

Anansi scratched his chin with one of his spider legs, pushing his green-lensed sunglasses up the bridge of his nose with one of his human hands. “Something might take advantage of Pitch’s obvious status as primary antagonist to pit him as a red herring -”

Sandy floated in front of Anansi, a wry expression on his face. A sand cloud above his head formed a book covered with illegible patterns, that reformed to clearly read “Once upon a time -”

“-Sorry,” said Anansi, grinning placatingly at the Sandman. “Once again, for the unfamiliar - someone may be framing him, knowing we would suspecting him. If that is the case, then this story should be a minor stitch in our larger tapestry, concluded, oh -” he shrugged. “Quickly.”

“And if it _is_ Pitch?” asked Tooth.

“Then this story will not be over quickly,” Anansi said, dryly.

“In that case,” said North, pulling a snowglobe from his pocket as the reindeer pulled the sleigh into position, and they climbed in - “I say we call in backup now, before Pitch is rearing his head.”

An image of Burgess appeared in the snowglobe as he swirled it in his hand. North cracked the reins and sent the reindeer charging down the sleigh launch and into open air.

They’d been reluctant to pull children into danger before - and they were still reluctant.

But Jamie had proven himself time and again as a stronger force against the Boogeyman than anything they had ever seen before - and the boy cared for Jack as much as they did. He deserved the chance to help save his friend, since he was capable of doing it. And their past campaigns against Pitch had given them reason to believe they might need all the help they could get.

* * *

The quiet sunday afternoon in Burgess found an Amazon queen and a time-travelling Space Agent locked in a struggle for the fate of time itself. 

“Mighty Hippolyta! Sink another basket! The world depends on your jump-shot!”

The sparkly-tutu’d Hippolyta threw another one of her incomparable jump-shots, and the basketball net affixed above the Bennet garage swished the sound of victory.

“We’ve won!” Hippolyta, as played by Cupcake, cheered. She whirled to the short pyramid of hay bales in the Bennett yard, and the pumpkin-headed Aztec High Priest that sat jauntily atop it. “Now you must honor your oath and free the sacrifices, or face the wrath of the Amazon Queen.”

The time-travelling Space Agent covered his mouth, abruptly switching characters as he gave voice to the villainous High Priest. “You’re too late, foreign infidels! It has already begun!”

Jamie Bennet uncovered his mouth, once again the noble and ingenious Space Agent from the Time Bureau of 3031. “The rift! It’s already opening! We have to free the sacrifices, or the world will end in blood!”

“ _Never_!” howled Hippolyta, as she charged yelling to the straw pyramid, wielding her mighty pool noodle in defense of the innocent beanie babies tied to the grill of the Bennet car.

Jamie laughed as Cupcake beat up an imaginary evil priest with the pool noodle. It wasn’t hard to imagine her as an _actual_ Amazon, or maybe a superhero, defending the innocent (another game they often played). Jamie could easily picture her growing up to be someone that helped people like that, like a police officer or a firefighter. That’s what he liked about her - what they played might be pretend, but it showed what kind of person Cupcake was for real and he just really liked that person.

When they’d saved the day and collapsed at the foot of the straw pyramid, Jamie grinned at her. “I’m really glad you’re willing to still play pretend.”

Cupcake grinned back. “Yeah, I’m glad you are too. I think the others are a little too eager to grow up to do it anymore.” Cupcake rolled her eyes. “I don’t think growing up sounds all that great if it means you have to stop having fun or believing in things that are important. I don’t know what’s up with the others.”  

They were the only two in the neighborhood who, at ages eleven and twelve, still had the yen to play pretend. It might have been lonely for both of them - if they hadn’t already been used to carrying the games of pretend for a few months by that time. Even Claude and Caleb were only up for basketball when it was actually basketball, and not a pretend game of ullamaliztli for their lives.

They were the only two who still admitted to listening for reindeer on the rooftops at Christmas, to waking up early trying to catch a glimpse of eggs running into place on Easter.

Maybe the other preteens of Burgess would have paused, at the sight of a massive sleigh coming in to land with a noise like a spaceship powering down on the street in front of the house, but not Cupcake and Jamie. They only charged over, their faces alight with wonder - and Jamie’s mixed with urgency.

“Let me guess,” said Jamie, as he came to a stop beside the sleigh, glancing around the sleigh for the missing Guardian. “Jack’s in trouble again?”

“We reckon,” said Bunny.

Jamie heaved a long-suffering sigh that didn’t mask the glee he still felt at being party to Guardian business, and climbed aboard. “What a damsel.”

“Hello Cupcake,” said Tooth, politely, waving with a smile to the Amazon Queen.

Cupcake was almost too delighted to speak. She hadn’t seen the Guardians since she was 8, and aside from a brief visit from Jack at her snowed-in school during the awful blizzard a few years back, it was her first time seeing them all again.

Her spell broke as Jamie climbed aboard the sleigh. “Scoot over,” she said, following him on and shoving him into Sandy to clear a space for her. She plunked onto the seat without waiting to be invited.

“Uh -” said Jamie, as she did. “Not that I’m objecting, but - this might be dangerous. Scary and dangerous.”

They played at fighting terrible things - but they both knew, Jamie a little more than Cupcake, that actually facing nightmares was a different story.

“Please,” said Cupcake, raising her eyebrow at Jamie with a smile. “Jack is the damsel of this group, remember? And who said there was only room for _one_ fearless kid on Santa’s sleigh?”

“It... _will_ be dangerous,” Bunny said, glancing at Tooth and Sandy as they shared reluctant glances over bringing any more children than they needed to into a fight.

“Like fighting the Boogeyman?” Cupcake sassed. “I’ve been wanting to give that jerk a face full of my boot ever since Jamie got to. You know I have bigger shoes than Jamie, right?”

The Guardians all glanced between each other, trying to contain their charmed smiles at Cupcake’s audacity and daring.

She was at that age when little girls who were audacious and daring often had that beaten out of them by the people around them who wanted to mold all young girls into similarly narrow boxes. If she was holding on to her most heroic self, they weren’t going to help get rid of it. They would gladly do the exactly opposite

“I like this one,” said Anansi, reaching one of his spiderlegs towards Cupcake. “She is full of fire. Why didn’t we bring her along sooner?”

Cupcake slapped the leg away. “Who’s the spider guy and why is he touching me?” she demanded.

“I’m not touching you,” Anansi said, waving three of his legs an inch around Cupcake’s shoulders. “Look! See how I am not touching her!”

“In a minute I’m gonna touch you pretty hard!” Cupcake threatened, rising from her seat with her hand in a fist to wave at the Guardian of Stories.

“Anansi! Cupcake!” North barked. “Separate sides of sleigh! Do not make me hand reins to Jamie!”

Jamie’s face lit up in a huge grin at the prospect of being handed the reins. “Guys, don’t stop now -”

But North cracked the reins and the entire team was forced back into their seats as the reindeer charged down the road and into the sky, North swirling the snowglobe in his hand to display their next destination.

* * *

Jack hurt all over when he woke up. That was the very first thing he was aware of, a strange cold ache from his muscles like he’d been dragged through a massive pane of freezing glass. It was if he’d fallen through a skylight from the light of the waking world into the icy darkness of nightmares. 

Abruptly, he opened his eyes and sat up, casting about for his staff.

It was nowhere to be found.

Jack scuttled back against the nearest wall, gritting his teeth in frustration. A sense of vulnerability settled over him without his staff, and he looked around, gasping raggedly at his surroundings. The same dim light illuminated this place that had lit the castle, but in here, it was somehow even bleaker than outside.

Massive stone walls rose up around him, with multiple paths visible at the ends of the pathway he was currently in. It looked like a maze. Jack climbed to his feet, his body still trembling, and took a few tenuous steps to the end of the path. More tunnels led silently away in all directions. It _was_ a maze, one full of silence and dust and dreary gray light that felt like it wasn’t even distant cousins with the light of the sun.

“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” came a voice behind him. Jack jumped, instinctually moving away from the shadows and from the person he knew was hiding in them.

Pitch melted out of the darkness, his hands folded behind his back.

“Darkness and dust and horrors that made those who fell in here wish there was emptiness instead. It’s a masterpiece. I wish I could take credit for it, but it’s the creation of myths so old that even I would never have heard of them.”

“I don’t know what your game is this time, Pitch, but the others -”

“The others don’t know where you are,” said Pitch, much too calm, much too triumphant already for Jack’s comfort. “You didn’t tell them where you were going and the puzzle box would’ve made you nearly impossible to track. Wonderful little device, isn’t it? I had it specially made by someone who has no love lost for the Guardians. The rest was all me, of course.”

Pitch waved his hand with a flourish, clearly proud of himself.

“All it took was some nightmare sand masquerading as clouds too keep off the prying eyes of the Man in the Moon, a handful of stolen dreamsand to put you to sleep, anise oil so the rabbit couldn’t track me by scent...”

Pitch did a little dance move that looked like a soft shoe.

“And the self-help book, that was a nice touch, wasn’t it? Oooh, if only I’d realized long ago that it could be this _easy_.” His mouth widened into a crooked grin. “They’re never going to find this place. After a while, they’ll just stop looking. You’ll see - they won’t care about you enough to keep at it for as long as it would take. That’s the _point_ of this, Jack. I’m doing this to _help_ you - to help you see the truth.”   

“Oh yeah, and what’s that? The fact that you’re crazier than a bag full of weasels?”

“The truth is that they don’t care about you. You may think they do, but there are things they care for more. They’ll won’t choose you at the expense of their precious missions - their precious belief. You’ll be here long enough to see that, long enough for them to give up on you.”

Jack lunged forward, but Pitch slipped into the shadows again, and Jack slammed his fists against the wall behind where he’d once stood instead.

He felt a presence behind him. Pitch whispered in his ear, his voice filled with some monstrous mix of longing and hatred.

“You should have accepted my offer in Antarctica, Jack.”

Jack turned to throw a punch, but Pitch had already disappeared again.

“Pitch! Get back here and face me!” Jack roared. “Pitch!”

There was no answer, only the echo of his voice through the stone pathways.

“Pitch!”

Jack looked up at the bleak gray light from nowhere, at walls that were too tall to climb and did the only thing he could do - he started walking. There had to be a way out of here. If he walked long enough and far enough, he’d find it - provided the Guardians didn’t find him first and make Pitch eat his words.

How big could this place be, anyway? he thought, not knowing that if he could fly up over the walls, he’d see a labyrinth that went out in every direction as far as the eye could see, filled with _things_ that were never meant to see the light of day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just to let folks know that, while we'll be using some of the book history, we treat the movie - and this series - as more of an adaptation. So things aren't going to be identical to the books. 
> 
> Also, giving credit where it's due: some of the odd items in the maze were pulled from the old tabletop RPG setup, Warehouse 23.

“Santa! He’s on my side again!”

“I am not! I am three times her size! I get three quarters of the bench!”

“That is _so_ not how benches work! And you’re reaching over Jamie!”

“Jamie is part of my quarters. He is a storyteller. Stories are my domain. I have blessed him as my own. My side is his side.”

Jamie, squashed between Cupcake and Anansi, hissed a breath in as Anansi squashed him to his side in a spider-legged hug. “I don’t know, Santa, things are getting pretty crazy back here. Maybe you should come and deal with this. I can take the reins for a moment.” His eyes shone with eagerness that betrayed his false tension.

“Hah!” North barked out a laugh. “Children of all ages, if I had time to turn this sleigh around, I would still say sort it out amongst yourselves! We have places to be, people to visit! Hold on!”

He tossed another snowglobe, portalling to the opposite side of the planet, where the stars glimmered through scanty clouds in the night sky. The full moon shone above them.

No sooner had the sleigh flown into the moonlight, then the Man in the Moon’s urgent voice assailed them.

“Manny, what is news?” North asked of the Moon.

“Have you seen Jack?” asked Tooth.

When Manny had spoken a few moments, Bunny held up both paws in protest. “Hang on, hang on Manny, one word at a time. _Where_ was Jack?”

When Manny had spoken a little longer, Cupcake furrowed her brow. “What are Nysiads?”

“Rain nymphs! Not the worst company for the Guardian of Fun to be in,” explained North, a reminiscent twinkle in his eye, as if he had firsthand experience of the nymphs’ company himself. “But is no good if he’s with them no longer. Manny, you were not seeing him anywhere else after?”

The answer was a quiet, terrifying no.

“We need to go talk to them,” said Tooth. “They might have at least some idea of what’s going on, of where he was going.”  

“They live on Mount Nysa,” Bunny put in. “North, are you on this?”

North swirled the snowglobe in his hand. “Ah, of course! The Nysiads, they leave an impression. I could find my way back to their home by following the sound of rain.”

But the snowglobe was faster, so North threw it. They vanished through another portal.

The sleigh passed through rain clouds to come in for a landing on Mount Nysa, which told them they were in the right place. As the rain fell on their heads, Sandy conjured a massive sand umbrella and held it over Jamie and Cupcake. The sounds of giggles and hearty laughter drifted up to them through the trees.

Bunny leaned over the edge of the sleigh, smelling the wind. “Jack was definitely here,” he said. “All over these mountains, actually.” He paused, and sniffed the air more deeply. “Smells like a couple satyrs joined in after he left.” He took another deep sniff, then looked at Tooth, eyebrows raised. “We should leave the kids in the sleigh.”

“But I wanted to meet the Nysiads!” Jamie objected, as the sleigh bounced to a halt on the choppy mountain landscape. “Ow. And satyrs sound cool -”

“Maybe some other time,” said Tooth, patting Jamie consolingly as she raised an eyebrow at Bunny in comprehension.

“No way,” Cupcake objected, trying to climb out. “I didn’t climb on Santa’s sleigh to sit in it the whole time.”

Tooth zipped up from her seat, plucking Cupcake up and sitting her back down with surprising strength. “Don’t worry, Anansi will keep you company.”

Anansi, halfway out of the sleigh, looked up. “I will?”

Cupcake and Jamie looked doubtful. “He will?”

“Do not worry,” North said, as he followed Tooth, Bunny, and Sandy off the sleigh. “We promise to have no fun without you. Anansi, keep eyes on them. All eight, perhaps.”

Jamie and Cupcake flopped back in their seats under the hovering dreamsand umbrella with resentful sighs. Anansi folded himself back into the sleigh, bearing his gleaming white teeth in a slow, sharp-toothed grin. “Would you children like to hear a story?”

* * *

Fortunately for the Guardians, despite the satyrs dancing and drinking in the rain, the Nysiads were just having a party rather than a _party._ As soon as they saw the Guardians break through the underbrush the satyrs waved and the Nysiads squealed with delight.

“Northy!”

“What didja bring us?”

Pedile, Cisseis, and Arsinoe spotted Tooth and swarmed over to her with excited grins as the rest of the Nysiads crowded around North exactly like excited children at Christmas. “He brought us the Tooth Fairy!”

“You left your nest!”

“We thought you’d _never_ come party with us!”

Tooth smoothed back her feathers and smiled at the sisters. “Sorry, girls, I’m still here on business. We’re looking for our friend Jack. Have you seen him?”

“Yes, is very important,” North agreed. “No time for toys today, ladies, so sorry!”

The Nysiads moaned with disappointment, but composed themselves.

“He was here two days ago,” said Bromia, offering a bottle to Sandy, who bowed to her politely before accepting it, as she held a hand up to keep the rain off him. “He said he was on a Spiritual Journey. He didn’t tell you where he was going?”

“He didn’t tell us he was going on a journey at all,” said Bunny, bouncing in place with agitation as Eriphia walked up beside him. “He was supposed to meet me in Waimea, but he’s gone walkabout instead-” He cut off abruptly, frozen as Eriphia reached up with a smug smile to scratch a spot on his neck. “Ah - Sheila - this is not the time -” he paused as she didn’t stop, and gave in with a sigh half of resignation, half of enjoyment. “At least point us in the right direction. In minute or two.”

“He didn’t go in _any_ direction,” said Eriphia, adjusting her fingers slightly. “He just vanished - poof! Like through a portal.”

“Only it wasn’t really a ‘poof,’ said Coronis, “It was more an, uh - otherworldly wrenching of the fabric of space. Does that sound right?”

The other Nysiads nodded thoughtfully in agreement.

“He had this puzzle box,” said Erato. “We thought of was from the Man in the Moon, but then there was that noise -”

“This puzzle box,” said North, bushy eyebrows raising. “Did it look complex? Intricate?”

“Very,” said Erato. “It had all these moving parts.”

North nodded his head. “And when the puzzle was complete, he was sent away, as if he had been pulled through one of the portals from my snowglobes?”

The Nysiads nodded.  

North paced back and forth in place, animated even in thought, his hand brushing at his bushy beard.

“There are very few who have the skill to create such a thing. That gives us a place to start.”

“Is Jack in trouble?” asked Eriphia.

“He has to be.” Bunny ducked (reluctantly) out from under from Eriphia’s scritchy fingers. “He wouldn’t break a meeting with me otherwise. North, have you got a lead?”

Ambrosia, who’d come up beside Eriphia, brought her hands to her face in glee. “You and Jack were doing a thing? Are you friends now?”

“ _That’s adorable,”_ said Eriphia, mirroring her sister.

Bunny rolled his eyes, but it didn’t mask his half-smile. “That lead, North?”

“I am having a thought. Is just a thought,” said North, his brow furrowed, resting his chin on his knuckle. “But is very persistent thought. There are few who could make such a device - very few. To the sleigh!”

“Thank you so much for your help,” said Tooth, as she drew away from the nymphs

“We hope Jack is okay,” said Ambrosia. “Please have him come see us when you find him.”  

“And you should come see us sometime too,” said Cisseis, mainly to Tooth, but she nodded to the rest of the Guardians. “All of you work too hard. If Jack’s spiritual journey goes well, maybe he can still teach you a thing or two about relaxing when you get back.”

“Here’s hoping,” Bunny agreed. The Guardians glanced between themselves as they made their way back to the sleigh, their worry unspoken, but clear to each other.

They arrived to find Anansi engrossed in the telling of what was apparently a very suspenseful story, by the way Cupcake and Jamie were leaning forward, silent and motionless, their mouths open with anticipation.

“- but when she pushed aside the branches, she saw only -” Anansi looked up to see the returning Guardians. “Oh look, they’ve returned! It seems we’ll have to finish later.”

The kids wailed “Nooooooo!” and Jamie flopped dramatically out of his seat.

“You can’t stop there!” Cupcake howled. “Not when everything’s so horrible!”

“Did they find the statue? What happens next? I’ll die if I don’t know!” Jamie wailed, writhing at the bottom of the sleigh.

“Of course I can stop there,” Anansi said, grinning as the children loudly, wordlessly objected. “If I didn’t, I couldn’t enjoy these beautiful tears from my audience.”

“You’re evil, Spider-man,” Cupcake accused. “If you don’t tell us the ending, I’ll make one up.”

Anansi laughed out loud. “And I would love to hear it,” he said, without a trace of sarcasm.

The other Guardians piled into the sleigh, Bunny taking the seat behind North.

“You didn’t say what your lead was,” he reminded the Cossack. “You gonna share that insight with any of us, mate?”

“There are few who could make a device such as the Nysiads said - very few,” said North. He gave Bunny a meaningful look. “And there is one of those few who has no love for me,” he added, and Bunny’s eyes widened with recognition.

“But first, I think we stop to see one who _does_ have love for all of us,” said North. He cracked the reins and sent the reindeer soaring into the sky.

* * *

There was no way to track where he’d been. It wasn’t as if he had a marker on hand, after all. So, it was with great hesitance that Jack decided to mark the walls with the only thing he had available to him - his blood. Biting his finger hard enough to make it bleed was exactly as painful as he thought it would be, but the bites healed quickly and the pain was tolerable as long as he gave each finger time to let the dull ache from his self-inflicted wounds fade.

At each junction between turns of the maze, he marked one wall with a number to keep track of where he’d already been. He also smudged the pages of his book to mark the passage of time, one smudge per day. It was hard to tell without the sun to guide him, but after living over three hundred years his sense of time had gotten rather well-developed.

He was fairly sure at least a day had passed, and so far his searching had amounted to a big, ol’ nothing. The passageways all looked identical, aside from his marks. If not for them, he would have thought he’d been through the same turns multiple times already.

After what felt like the millionth right turn, Jack finally walked into a room that was unlike anything he’d ever seen before. Light came from nowhere, much like it did in Bunny’s warren, and like the Warren the entire area was filled with plants - but they were all made of colored glass. They scattered the light through the room in prismatic bands of color, wild conflicting splashes of light that seemed as alive as real plants.

Jack reached up to touch one, pleased as it swayed on its fragile glass stem without breaking. It was cold to the touch, like the smoothest sheet of ice. He brought his face close to it and breathed on the flower petals. Frost from his breath scattered across it in fractal patterns, even though he was completely powerless without his staff.

After hours of wandering in the dark, featureless maze, the delicate beauty of the flowers was as good as a glimpse of sunlight. Jack was caught up in enjoying it for a good moment, before it occurred to him to wonder what something lovely was doing in this maze at all.

Pitch had said there were horrors in the maze that made one wish it were empty instead. So what did that make this room of beauty?

As if reading his mind, the flowers all suddenly bent on their stems, turning to face him like so many eyes, their petals spinning, exposing razor-sharp edges.

Jack didn’t wait around, no longer interested to see what the room was. He booked it through the field of flowers and reached the other side just before they exploded in a cloud of whirling razor-edged shrapnel petals.

Well, so much for a moment of soothing beauty. Jack sat against the wall to calm his frantic breathing in the nothingness of the maze as the noise of the shattering flowers died down.

He looked up briefly, and saw a mark of his own blood on the wall

“Cock and pie!”

He’d gotten turned around again. Jack rose to his feet with a groan, and trudged on. At this rate, it would take him _years_ to make any progress.

The next turn of a corner brought him into a room shelved almost to the very top of the maze - almost, but not quite enough to climb to the actual top from. That was Jack’s first disappointed observation. The second was that the shelves were all full of stuff - some of it weird and unrecognizable at first glance, some of it apparently mundane - like all the nails, spoons, and single socks lying around.

“Well.” Jack frowned at the stuff. “This makes perfect sense and isn’t weird or seriously creepy in any way.”

He hadn’t forgotten the razor flowers of before, but he still had to wonder if some of the things on the shelves might be useful.

If he’d had his staff, he would have poked the nearest thing (a box, with weird symbols on it). Then again, if he had his staff, he’d have flown out of the maze hours ago.

The next best thing he could do was poke at a box, back away, poke at it again, back away, flip off its lid, back away - and so on, until he was sure it wasn’t going to explode in his face. He crept over slowly after all that timid poking and peeked in. The moment he did, the contents of the box shot out, narrowly missing his face. They arced in the air above him. Jack threw himself backward and covered his face, peeking through the gap between his arms.

It was a pair of ice skates, of all things, old beat-up leather ones, child’s sized and crudely stitched. They reminded Jack of the ones he and his sister had used when he was young. Far be it from doing anything dangerous, they glided and twirled overhead, as if someone was skating invisibly in the air.

Jack stayed where he sat on the ground for several minutes, waiting for them to do something dangerous, but they never did. Before long, Jack found them far too elegant to be frightening. Like the left socks and sets of keys and some of the battered toys he saw lying around, he had a feeling that the skates were certainly lost but just as certainly harmless.

“Don’t suppose you know the way out, huh?” he asked of the skates, climbing to his feet. They suddenly stopped, something he took as a no, before starting up in sluggish spirals again. “Guess not or you’d be triple salchow-ing your way to freedom right now instead of hanging around with me.”

The skates followed Jack in the air as he stepped forward towards the boxes again. The skates weren’t exactly useful but maybe there was something in the piles of junk that could actually help him.

Jack used his tried and true poke-and-retreat method on another box before finally mustering up the courage to peek inside. This time it was a tuning fork. Curious, he reached inside and picked it up. It was strangely warm in his hands. There weren’t a lot of ways he imagined a tuning fork could be helpful in escaping a maze, but he still struck it as lightly as possible on the side of the box, thinking it would be nice to hear something other than the sound of his voice.

There was no audible sound but pain exploded in Jack’s head, a stabbing pain in the center of his skull so piercing it brought tears to his eyes. He dropped the tuning fork, unintentionally making it ring out again, and crumpled to the floor in a ball. Fortunately, the stabbing pain lasted for only ten seconds before fading to a dull ache.

“Not my most brilliant moment.”

Jack carefully put the tuning fork back in its box and put the lid on.

A bottle on the shelf caught his eye, and he stood up to get a closer look, pressing his hand to his forehead against the dull ache lingering there. Inside the bottle was a tiny figure dressed in what looked like a fanciful Arabian costume.

It was too good to be true, but Jack still grabbed the bottle. His spark of hope all but died as he saw the little figure inside was not a living genie, but a skeleton. He opened the bottle but all that happened was that it smelled a bit musty.

On closer inspection, the tiny skeleton inside had already crumbled slightly from Jack shaking it around. He set the bottle back on the shelf with a sigh. Even if the bottle _had_ held a genie, it might have been one of the ones  that killed its liberator upon gaining freedom. Anansi had told him stories. Still, it had been worth a try.

Jack poked the lid of a new box open and jumped back when a few notes of music tumbled out. He crept forward, inspecting the box more carefully. It was old, gilded and carved with elegant golden designs, obviously quite valuable. He pushed open the lid again, and more music filtered out. He left the lid open, and the music went on and on, with no signs of winding down, but that was all it did.

Jack had never heard a music box with a song that changed subtly each time it played, though. Curiously, he pulled the back of the music box off but all he saw inside were the usual parts most music boxes had. He snapped the box back together and set it back in its place.

The music was eerie, but not frightening. It was more unearthly than anything, filled with the kind of beauty that took someone far away from where they were. It sounded like like kind of music that came from places that were brighter - and older - than anything Jack had ever known.  

He left it playing as he looked through the other boxes. The golden-toned music was a comfort.

The next box opened from the front, like a door. Jack pulled it open -

\- and was suddenly looking out from inside the box. Yet his hand was still on the knob of the box’s door. His headless body stood in front of him.

He shut the door, and suddenly he was looking at the box again, his head back in its usual place. Jack stood stock still for a moment, looked left, looked right, felt reassured that his head was still connected as it ought to be, and opened the door again. Instantly, he was inside the box, looking out at the rest of the room. The ice skates breezed merrily in front of his vision, twirling as if for his benefit.

He lifted the hand not on the tiny door’s knob, and waved it through where his head normally was.  His hand encountered nothing.

Jack shut the box and walked quickly away. “Worst. Box. Ever.”

A sword leaned against the wall, gilded gold like the music box, and engraved with runes. It took longer than usual for the Guardians translation magic to kick in, but when it did, Jack read "Take Me Up" on the blade.

He laughed out loud. “How about no, mysterious sword?”

Then again... it was a weapon. And he was currently unarmed. He knew which side to hold, right? He’d seen North waving his swords around all the time. How hard could wielding one be?

Reluctantly, Jack stepped forward, reaching out and brushing his fingers against the hilt of the weapon. When he wasn’t randomly electrocuted or set on fire, he let his fingers curl around the hilt more tightly.

He lifted up the sword to take a good look at it. The other side was engraved as well: “Cast Me Aside."

 

That was when he heard the whispers. They were ugly and oily and reached deep inside Jack’s head to that area of his brain that itched when he was his most afraid.

**_“end it all. end it break it let it fall to dust. let the dark sweep in and devour it. the light must die. kozmotis, make them bow down in fear of us...”_ **

Jack threw the sword to the ground with a loud clang. No go on that one. (Who was Kozmotis anyway?)

He lifted open the next box and saw nothing inside but a greyish layer of dust. The tiniest air currents swirled it up from its rest, and Jack watched the patterns they made.

Suddenly, the box fell apart, and dust avalanched over Jack’s hands. He jumped back, shaking the dust off, but they quickly began to itch. He blew on his hands, reluctant to grind the dust in or wipe it on his sweater, but before his eyes, angry blood bruises blossomed on his hands.

“Ahh!” Jack shook his hands more vigorously. The itching went on, but the blisters stopped growing once his hands were mottled and angry-looking. He crouched in the center of the room, blowing on his hands, breathing heavily, but soon, the itching subsided. The bruises began to recede, healing at his usual accelerated rate.

It was probably about time to go - but Jack spotted another box gilded with similar carvings to the music box. He looked at this one closely, trying to decipher the pictograms on its surface. These were not words, apparently, because the Guardian magic didn’t translate them, but the circular lid had notches around it, like a timer. Jack touched it, and when his hands didn’t burst into flame, he tried to lift the lid. It twisted instead. He turned the lid counterclockwise, and it began to open, ticking open slowly.

The lid flew open with a flash of light and a bang like a star exploding. Jack shut his eyes in pain as a dull ringing filled his ears. He must have yelled, but couldn’t hear it as he fell to the ground, away from the noise and the light.

He waited as the ringing in his ears faded slowly into silence. The pain in his eyes faded, and he opened them.

Nothing changed. He blinked his eyes, and saw only darkness.

He realized he couldn’t hear the ringing anymore - but he couldn’t even hear the sound of his own breathing.

He yelled. He knew he’d yelled, because he felt himself yelling, but he didn’t hear it. He blinked his eyes, waved his hands in front of his face, but - nothing.

He knelt on the ground, feeling himself making noises he couldn’t hear, waiting for his body to heal itself, and curling up on the ground when it didn’t.

He lay that way for an hour, feeling exposed and terrified, blinking his eyes in attempt after attempt to clear them. It was only at the end of the hour that he began to see shadows in the blackness of his vision, and hear his breath as he took it in and out. Slowly, finally, his vision returned, his pulse beat in his ears, and he heard himself speaking again.

The ice skates twirled above him when he was able to see again, hovering there like they hadn’t left him while he curled up senseless.

He was still trembling as he pushed himself up to lean against the wall. He rubbed at his eyes and wiped his still-wet face as he sat there, waiting for the rest of his vision and hearing to come back.

“I think, uh, I think that’s enough opening boxes for today, huh?” he said shakily to the skates. “Let’s save some for next Christmas.”  

As he stood, though, his gait was unsteady, and he knocked into one of the shelves, knocking a box from it. He yelped and jumped back, closing his eyes and covering his ears, but nothing flashed.

He caught sight of something moving in the box, though. Instead of taking a closer look, he stepped back.

“Yeah, I’ve had enough surprises today.”

The creature inside the box thrashed, throwing the lid open, and out scurried a many-legged thing that - no, it was a pair of _hands_ sewn together. The hands reared up on one set of fingers, opening a palm in Jack’s direction. An eye blinked at him in the center of the palm.

 

Jack stared at it, motionless, and the creature scurried away with sudden, surprising speed. Jack scurried even more quickly in the other direction, running out of the door opposite the one the sewn-together hands had run through.

The skates followed him, still doing their lazy twirls overhead. He lead them down a long corridor, wondering when they’d stop following. They never did.

“So, are you in this for the long haul, skate-buddies?” Jack asked, eyeing them. They swished side to side across his path as he kept walking it.

Well. Jack couldn’t say he minded.

When he looked down from the skates, a glow up ahead caught his eye. Something shed a blue light around the next corner of the maze, a bright gleam unlike anything else that illuminated the dull maze.

Jack saw something at the corner far ahead of him. A hand, reaching around the join in the maze walls. Half a face, peeking at him, shedding that blue light.

He’d only opened his mouth to call out when the figure disappeared around the corner.

Jack bolted after it. “Hey! Hey, uh - person! You’re not leading me into a trap _too_ , are you?”

He was all too keenly aware that he’d done a lot of running into traps, especially lately, so when he reached the corner of the maze, he slowed down and took it carefully.

The figure was flitting around the next corner just as Jack looked around the wall to see it. Jack caught a glimpse of a spear grasped in the running figure’s hand.

He kept up the chase, taking the corners carefully, always just in time to see where the light boy had gone by a gleam at each new corner.

Finally he saw him standing still at the end of a long hallway, long enough to get a proper glimpse of him.

He was just a slip of a thing, barely substantial, like a cloud of warm breath on a cold winter day. He looked younger than Jack and was skinny in a way that almost looked alien. His clothing absolutely looked alien; his strange armor looked like it had been grown rather than made, replete with pointy shoes that gave him an elfin air. His hair was bright white and his skin glowed with a pale light like the light of the stars. The thing was most striking to Jack though was how similar the boy’s face looked to his own - just different enough to make it clear they weren’t the same person, but similar enough that they could’ve been confused for cousins, maybe. Given the boy’s strange - nearly alien - form, it was clear that was just a coincidence, but it was striking in its strangeness.

Clutched in the boy’s hand was a spear with a glowing blade at the end that looked more like a crystal than something made of metal, but he didn’t seem to be planning on using it. His body language was far from aggressive.

In fact, on the elfin boy’s face, Jack saw an expression of great sadness, sadder than he had ever seen before in his life. It didn’t look like it belonged there naturally - a face like that seemed like it was more prone to laughter and joy.

“Who are you?” he asked the boy, cautiously approaching him in the hallway, his heart panging with the possibility that this boy - younger than he was - had been trapped alone in this maze, too. “Are you - are you lost, too?”

If he was, who knew how long he’d been lost?

The boy stared down the hallway, sad eyes boring into Jack like he was trying to communicate something with his gaze alone.

Then he darted around yet another corner.

“Hey! Hey, kid, wait!”

Jack ran over, turned the corner and found himself in a gilded walkway with windows that opened up to the most beautiful city he’d ever seen. Ships - flying ships like something out of a sci fi movie - shot along from place to place, gleaming silver and gold, as if they were made from parts of the finest Swiss watches. Jack could only gape in awe at the majesty of what he saw, at the massive buildings spiralling up into gold and crystal towers.  

“General Pitchiner, I have the guard shifts for next week.”

Jack turned and saw -

He saw something that made absolutely no sense. Two men in red and black uniforms, their armor a shining gold, walked up the walkway towards him, in lock-step.  

“Thank you, Captain Breen,” said a voice Jack was most used to hearing from the shadows.  

Jack could only stare, slack jawed, as the two soldiers walked towards him. One of them, Jack had never seen before - a bearded man with sparkling, golden skin that reminded him of Sandman’s.  

The other soldier, though, was clearly, and bewilderingly, none other than -

“Pitch!”

Jack threw himself at the soldier to punch him in the face, but he passed through him like smoke - just as he’d passed through every human before he’d had believers.

So this was an illusion.

Jack stood for a moment, wondering if he should try to find his way out of the vision, or follow the two men. Ultimately, the pull of curiosity was too strong to ignore. He followed the two soldiers.

The illusion of Pitch looked...different. His skin was pale, but the normal fleshtones of a human being rather than a dreary gray. His eyes, instead of being eclipsed by a dangerous yellow color, were the only thing grey about him, but they were warm and almost...kind. His hair looked normal, instead of spiking up like he’d found some porcupine roadkill and decided it’d make a dandy hat. It was cut short, like that of military officers on Earth.  

Instead of oozing everywhere he walked, he carried himself with a quiet, upright dignity that Jack never would have thought Pitch capable of.

“Very good, Captain Breen.” The soldier who resembled Pitch nodded. “Make sure it’s posted before the end of your shift today.”

“Yessir.” The golden-skinned man paused. “By the way, sir, am I supposed to curtsey now that you’re a general, sir?”

Pitch seemed to be resisting the urge to grin and nearly failing at it. “A simple salute will do, Captain Breen.”

“Sir, yes, sir,” the soldier added, with a perfectly straight face, “Sir.”

“Jem -” Pitch corrected himself. “ _Captain_ \- if you have any problems with protocol, you are free to voice them.”

“Well, sir, it’s just sir, sir sir, sir sir sir. Sir.”

Now Pitch laughed, openly and freely in a way that was completely devoid of any sneering malice. It was a laugh Jack never could have imagined coming out of Pitch’s mouth.

“Jem, I know it’s an adjustment, but if anyone else catches us being casual, it won’t reflect well on us. We have our careers to think about.”

“No one will catch us being casual when it’s just us, Koz. Back when you were a captain and I was a lieutenant you weren’t like this unless we were deployed. Now you’re a general, who says you gotta stuff your shirt up, and why are you listening to them?"

Koz? Was that short for Kozmotis? That was the name Jack had heard those frightening voices whisper when’d picked up that sword earlier.  

He followed the two down several more turns, running alongside them to see their faces as they talked. They passed several strange circular devices which they put their palms on that seemed to perform some kind of scan - maybe security checkpoints? The massive, heavy doors that opened after they did it didn’t seem apt to opening otherwise.

“It’s different in the upper ranks. There are...expectations.”

“What we really need is a good round of Moonball,” said the golden, bearded soldier. Kozmotis snorted at the suggestion. “No, hear me out,” he went on. “Imagine it - you’re a general now, you’ve got general clout. You’ve got rank over Asmeagan, and he’s more stuffed-shirted at his funnest than you are even when you try. Take that rank, and order him to let us make him eat dirt with it. Our unit, and his unit, Saturday. What do you say?”

Kozmotis waved his hand. “I’m far too busy on Saturday for such frivolities now that I’ve achieved rank.”

“C’mon! What use is rank if you’re not using it to stick old sticks in the mud, uh...in the mud?”

“I said I was busy Saturday,” Kozmotis said smoothly. “What about Sunday?”

The bearded soldier laughed, clapping Kozmotis - General Pitchiner - on the back.

“See you then,” the burly man said as he ducked down another hallway, report still in hand.

Pitch - Kozmotis kept walking, the slightest spring to his step as he did. As he approached another security checkpoint, this one full of heavily armed soldiers, that spring in his step faded away and was replaced with trepidation that he seemed to be trying to hide.

The soldiers at the checkpoint saluted.

“Sir. The area is secure, sir.”

Kozmotis returned the salute. “At ease, soldiers. I’m here to relieve Captain Jelias and report for my shift.”

There was another security check to complete here. The soldiers scanned him with handheld … somethings that weren’t unlike the metal detectors at an airport.

“He’s clean,” said the soldier at the checkpoint. He placed his hand onto another circular device. The massive doors behind the checkpoint opened and the general strode into a cavernous room. At the end stood a massive, massive door. It was locked up with all manner of magic seals and protective sigils. They were all alien, but it was very, very clear to Jack that they were meant to keep something inside.

 

Standing in front of the door, keeping guard, was a female soldier. Under her helmet, her hair was blond, and a large scar twisted her lips.

“Sir,” she said, saluting Kozmotis. “The gate is secure, sir. All seals have been checked for stress fractures and are intact. All fifteen containment spells have been recast as per protocol.”  

“At ease, Captain Jelias. You’re relieved. I’ll be assuming the next guard shift.”

“Thank you, sir.”   

Kozmotis took his post at the door. The captain relaxed just slightly as she walked away, looking back at him with a lingering glance of what possibly was concern.

“They’ve been quiet today, sir.”

“As per the usual, I expect.”

“As per the usual, sir,” she repeated slowly.

“I said you’re relieved, Captain,” Kozmotis repeated, but his voice wasn’t overly harsh. In fact, he sounded as if he was trying to keep it from sounding too gentle because he knew it would be unprofessional.

“Of course, sir,” the captain said. She marched out with obvious reluctance.

The massive doors shut, leaving Kozmotis alone in the room, keeping guard in front of what only could be an incredibly high-security prison.

When the silence fell, the whispers began.

**_“kooozmotiiisss.”_ **

It took a while for the whispers to form into voices. They were easy to mistake for ambient noises before their words became too pointed to mistake for wind from outside the walls.

**_“it will fall. it will fall into dust.”_ **

**_“everything will fall away into the void. even the dust will spin apart.”_ **

**_“and it will be you that undid them.”_ **

“You,” the man said shakily, “are trapped - and that is where you will stay. Never to harm anyone - any child - ever again.”

Yet he shook as he stood there, looking as if this was some great torment he endured on a regular basis and always dreaded going back to.

“It’s over, and the worlds are safe. You’re never leaving this prison.”

**_“you will try to stop us.”_ **

**_“you will not stop us.”_ **

Jack could almost feel the man’s emotions as he felt them. Pride seemed to be the strongest among those feelings. Pride that made him hide just how difficult this was for him - and shame at his own weakness.

Other feelings of his were far more selfless in nature. If he had difficulty enduring this, how could he force this duty on others? Only those who could endure it should have to - if he gave up his shifts, others would have to suffer through them instead.

This was simply another burden for him to _endure._

**_“you’re going to fail them all, kozmotis.”_ **

His fear was as sharp as the rasp of the voices on Jack’s ears.

“I never have,” protested the man who looked so much like Pitch, in calm, even tones betrayed only by his shaking hands. “I never will.”

Just as suddenly as Jack had found himself in the strange vision, it blasted apart, dissolving into golden dust that faded away. Jack found himself in an empty room with empty gray walls, a room that looked like all the other passageways in the maze.

“What,” he said to the skates, now pirouetting into view over his head, “the heck. Was _that_?”

* * *

The sleigh emerged over a Siberian forest, the day just breaking as North brought the reindeer lower over the stretch of evergreens. Jamie and Cupcake leaned over the side of the sleigh, gazing at the new landscape in wonder before returning to their prior activity - pestering Anansi.

“C’mon, we’ve got time! Keep telling the story!”

Cupcake agreed, “One more chapter! One more chapter!”

Jamie took up the chant, and Anansi sat smug and satisfied as they wore themselves out with yelling. “Maybe you should yell louder. It might magically give us time for the rest.”

“C’moon, we gotta know what happens next!”

“You’re gonna tell us when the sleigh lands, right?”

The Guardians laughed.

“Just one part of a story, and already you are wanting to stay in sleigh when you are in a great story yourself?” North asked of the children. “No, my little friends, storytime is all very well and good but if all you are doing is listening to the stories of others, you are not making stories of your own! As our dear friend will tell you - ah, sooner than I thought.”

He nodded to a distant speck on the horizon, which resolved itself into a large bird, flying towards them. _Too_ large a bird, in fact - greater than any Jamie and Cupcake had ever seen.

Bunny, Tooth, and Sandy’s worried expressions had lifted briefly. Anansi grinned hugely, steepling his fingers with eagerness.

“Who -?” Jamie asked,

“Her name is Katherine,” said Anansi. “A lady of taste and talent.”

“I haven’t seen her in a hundred years,” Tooth commented, as they drew closer to the bird, and the children realized it wasn’t the bird the Guardians were talking about - it was the woman riding the bird. “She visited the Tooth Palace while chasing down some story close to my home. I wonder how much she’s written since I saw her last.”

Sandy nodded as they floated out of the sleigh, sand images of books and scrolls that Toothiana seemed to recognize floating over his head.

“Yes, I loved that one! I couldn’t put it down! I had to get each sentence in between assignments.” Tooth’s smile was sheepish. “Some of the fairies got lost that day.”

The bird, a giant, snow-white goose, wheeled in midair a half-mile ahead of them, flying their way as the sleigh caught up. When they’d drawn up beside the goose, the woman on its back waved to them.

“Make some room for me,” she called, to the full sleigh. “I have a lot to go over.”

The Guardians slid to the far side of the sleigh, and Katherine stood up on gooseback. The goose veered over the sleigh, and she leapt onto a clear seat. The goose circled overhead, and suddenly diminished in size until it was small enough to drop down into the myth lady’s arms. She smoothed its feathers with an affectionate stroke, and it settled into her lap.

She was in her twenties, and wore a yellow coat. A colorful hat sat on her head, tied to it with a blue kerchief so it didn’t blow off in the wind. Strapped to her waist was a curved sword, much like North’s sabers, in an intricately designed golden sheath.  

Her expression was stern in a way that came of constant, practiced concentration and focus rather than an ill temper, but it gave way to a broad smile as the Guardians swarmed to greet her.

“Good t’see ya again, Katherine.”

“It’s been too long.”

A sand pictogram of a scroll being written upon, with a question mark.

“It’s good to see you too, it _has_ been too long, and the writing is going just fine, thank you for asking.” Katherine’s face warmed with the hint of a smile. “I wish this visit was on much better circumstances than these, but it’s good to see all of you again.”

Anansi slid to her side, bearing his gleaming white grin. “Kaaaatherine,” he said, in his smoothest-toned voice. “How long has it been? Years? Decades? Do I have a story for you.”

“Might it be called ‘The Frost Spirit and the Honey Tree?’” asked Katherine, giving Anansi the sort of wry expression that made her look like she ought to have a pair of reading glasses to be looking over the rims of at him. “Because I’ve heard it.”

“What!” Anansi’s composure fell. “How! Who told you that one?”

“Is that one about Jack?” Jamie’s expression perked up. “It sounds like it’s about Jack. Can we hear it?”

“When you’re done with the other one,” Cupcake put in.

“No time for stories now,” said North, putting the sleigh in hover mode, and grabbing Katherine and pulling her into a massive bear-hug, goose and all. “But there is at least time for this!”

“North, I know technically I don’t _need_ to breathe, but being able to would still be nice.”

North released her with a laugh, clapping her on both shoulders. “Forgive me. And may I introduce Jamie and Cupcake?”

The children waved politely, Jamie’s smile slightly shy, Cupcake’s brazen and confident.

“Children, Katherine. She is my dear friend, who joined me on many an adventure when I was young and shall we say, more clever than wise. She was the first to believe Nicholas St. North could be more than a bandit looking for next big treasure. ”

“You’d know her better as Mother Goose,” Bunny put in.

The children’s eyes widened with recognition.

“Keeper of stories,” said Anansi. “ _All_ stories,” he added, smugly. “Not just the quality ones, like mine.”

“Says you,” Katherine said tartly. “Just because you look at a grander scope than I do, it doesn’t mean the stories you know are more important than others. Which brings me to why I was leaving Santoff Claussen. I was flying to see you, North.” 

“What luck that I was flying to see you in the same sky!” North exclaimed. “We have problem, big big problem. Our friend, Jack -”

“He’s missing,” Katherine finished for him. “I know. That’s why I was looking for you, North. I heard a whisper or two you might want to hear.”

North leaned intently. “You have heard word?”

“I know someone who knows someone who - well, you get the idea. I have my network of contacts. I’ve gotten word that a goblin named Mnug was overheard bragging in a bar in El Dorado about bringing meteor ore, laced with stardust, to an enemy of yours. He said it was meant to be used for a trap for one of the Guardians. ”  

“Which enemy?” North asked.

“By all accounts, that’s the one part Mnug hasn’t bragged about but I’m thinking it’s someone with an old grudge. Someone who would need that meteor to make the kind of metal you use in your snowglobes to created portals...”

North leaned back, sucking in a breath. “Just as I thought.”

“From the sound of it, he was contracted out to make this...whatever it was, for someone even worse, someone whose name Mnug was too afraid to mention - someone who wanted to trap a Guardian.”  

“Who? Who made the thing and who’s the person giving the thing to?” asked Jamie, as the Guardians exchanged knowing, concerned glances. They said nothing, and Jamie frowned. “You guys are being really heavy on the foreshadowing, just so you know.”

“They probably didn’t,” Anansi whispered conspiratorially to Jamie.

North raised his eyebrow in what, to all appearances, was a friendly fashion. “Katherine, my dear, where might I find this Mnug?”

Katherine smiled her savvy hint of a smile.

“Naturally, he’d have left the bar in El Dorado long ago, but someone with good sources might be able to tell you he has been returning there quite regularly as of late.”

North smiled his beaming smile. “And I do know someone who has very good sources.”

* * *

“So then I says to ‘em, I says ‘Nobby ain’t got nothin’ on Mnug the Treacherous’ and pow, right in the kisser. Went down like a sack of cats over the side of a bridge.”

“Waste of good cats, that is. Good eatin’.”

“S’just an expression.”  

The city of El Dorado gleamed with gold, as the legends said, but like every city, it had its seedy sections. The ones where the gold had become a bit tarnished. Or, to be more accurate, where any of the gold not firmly welded in place had long since been filched when nobody around was looking (and where some of the firmly welded gold had been pried away with a crowbar when nobody around was conscious).

The nameless, (nearly) goldless bar provided drink and a resting place for a lot of such filchers, one of whom had recently become quite the storyteller - to a point. Mnug was a tough nut, as mouthy goblins went. There were some heavy hitters in El Dorado’s shadowy corners who had to give him credit - it took more than the usual measures to get the names of shady employers out of Mnug, for all that he bragged freely about the work he did for them.

A burly troll was about to head out through the bar door but some instinct itching in the back of his troll brain told him to wait a moment. He was the lucky one. The other two goblins near the door were not. They flew halfway across the room when the door was kicked open, partly from the force of the kick, partly because the sight of the kicker’s red coat and massive boots incited them to spontaneously learn to fly, just to get away.

Every head in the room turned to the bar door and the individuals that stood there. Those that were only mildly malicious, mere ruffians a little rough around the edges, stared in open awe. Those who had performed certain deeds they wanted to hide were all consumed by the same terrified wish - ‘Please let the Guardians be here for someone other than me.’

The Guardians followed Nicholas St. North in, all but one - including the Spider, a new addition to the Guardians, though rumor had it he had perhaps been working for the Man in the Moon longer than anyone could have guessed. Even the Tooth Fairy had left her palace, and judging from her expression, had come down from her mountain to unleash her wrath upon the person who’d made her come such a long way.

The Guardians were accompanied by two human children, wearing bemused expressions, fearless in this otherwise-unsavory environment.

Those patrons that had weapons, resheathed them. Those that had no sheaths quietly put their weapons down, hid their drinks, and straightened their posture.

It was in their best interests not to present a bad image for children while the Guardians and actual children were present.

Mnug the Goblin shrank in his seat, trying very hard to slide out of view and not look like he was doing it, in a bar full of carefully motionless rapscallions. But his motion only caught Nicholas St. North’s eye, and the goblin froze again as North’s smile blossomed across his face.

“Mnug! Good fellow! A moment of your time?”

“Yes!” squawked the harpy sitting to Mnug’s left, leaping from her seat. “Yes, he is Mnug! You may talk to him! You may have my seat to do so!”

“And mine!”

“Oh, yes, mine too!”

“We’re not _all_ sitting,” Bunnymund cut in, in a dry voice that silenced every whisper in the room.

North, however, pulled a seat up cheerily. “Thank you, very courteous. So! Mnug. I think perhaps you have noticed - we are missing a friend. The whispers on the street, they say you perhaps can tell me where he has gone, yes?"

Mnug, whose reputation was of not giving up the goods, of being reliably tight-lipped, trembled under Santa Claus’s smiling gaze, and cracked like an eggshell beneath a bowling ball.

“I don’t know! I swear, I wasn’t told nothin. I’m just a finder, that’s all. I had no idea -”

“Ahem.” Jamie had crawled up onto one of the vacated bar stools a few seats away from the bone-chilling interrogation going down. The server, and a few members of the audience, spared an eyeball or two his way. Jamie looked very serious. “The lady and I would like some hot chocolate.”

“Excuse you,” Cupcake said. “The lady wants a -” she hesitated, like she was trying to think of something. “- A scotch. On the rocks.”

A couple of the savvier patrons looked at each other with raised eyebrows. Then they looked back at the Guardians with alarm as the mythic defenders of childhood (that weren’t in the process of terrorizing a goblin while wearing an expression of benign cheerfulness) all chuckled with sudden, but genuine, amusement.

The bartender looked desperately between the two children and the Guardians, his expression torn between terror over what might happen if he gave the child what she’d asked for if he wasn’t supposed to, and what might happen if he didn’t give it to her and he was supposed to. He was a goblin, he didn’t know what children drank. He had an inkling, though, that there were some things that they did not.

The Sandman smiled kindly, sympathetically even, at the bartender, and two mugs of hot cocoa appeared over his head as he pointed to the children.

“And maybe a fluoride water after that,” put in the Tooth Fairy, with a neat little smile. “If you have it, of course.”

Once upon a time the bartender had been the sort of troublemaker that knotted the manes of horses, cursed the odd traveler, and, his personal favorite, rotted people’s teeth in their sleep.

The Tooth Fairy’s polite, thin-lipped smile, made it clear that she was aware of this, and furthermore, aware that he was not doing this anymore and never would be again.

“I’ll - I’ll see what we’ve got in the back,” he said, meekly, before scurrying away from the Tooth Fairy’s piercing, panic-inducing gaze.

“You had no idea, you say?” North said, stroking his beard in thought as Mnug trembled in his seat. “Hmm, my friend, I think you might want to tell me what ideas you did have. I would be grateful. You see -”

He leaned in, as if to speak conspiratorially.

“We look for Jack Frost,” he said. “He is new Guardian, perhaps you had not heard?”

“I heard,” said Mnug, in a tiny voice stretched as thin as a violin wire. “We - we all heard.”

They’d heard amazing things. They’d heard that Jack Frost had taken Pitch down at the height of his power, with no more than a snowball to the head. They’d heard that Jack Frost had laughed in Old Man Winter’s face and undone his work, when so many older myths than he had been devoured by the old incarnation of winter. It was said, too, that Jack Frost’s presence had stayed Bunnymund’s hand, when he had the chance to end the life of the being that had destroyed his home and left him bereft of kith and kin.

Old Man Winter had still died of course, but the point was that he had not died at the hand of the Guardian who had every right to end his life. And the Guardian said to be responsible for that mercy was missing.

And Mnug the Goblin had been bragging that he’d had a hand in procuring things meant to trap a Guardian.

Every eye in the room was narrowed at the goblin, as they realized that the Guardian he’d helped trap was the only Guardian who hadn’t already beaten anyone present in the room to a bloody pulp.

“We’re all fond of him,” North went on.

“Very fond,” put in Bunnymund.

“ _Deeply_ so,” added the Tooth Fairy.

“So if someone has taken him - I am inviting you to consider: you know what we Guardians do for the people we love. You do know what we will do, don’t you, Mnug?” North’s smile took on a hint of concern, as if over the notion that Mnug might _not_ be aware what the Guardians would do for the sake of those they loved.

“I know,” said Mnug, in the same thin voice.

“So I think, say you are knowing a thing or two.” North shrugged. “I think you will be understanding and share your knowledge with us.”

The bartender returned, sliding three mugs of piping hot cocoa onto the bartop. Cupcake looked a little disappointed, though not surprised, and she and Jamie reached for theirs.

“Hold on,” Bunnymund warned them, loping to the bar and flaring his nostrils wide as he took a deep sniff of the steam from all three drinks. He looked up, considering the scent, his steely glare locked on the barkeep.

The entire room held their breath until Bunnymund said, “They’re clean. Go for it, kids.”

Only then did North, too, pick up the cocoa he hadn’t even bothered to ask for.

He took time to enjoy it as he drank it. That seemed to be the final straw for Mnug: North casually taking time to enjoy his cocoa.

“Okay, okay, I give!” said Mnug frantically. “I was hired by Krampus. He needed someone to get meteor ore, laced with stardust, said he was using it to trap a Guardian. Someone hired him to make it for them.”

North finished his long sip of cocoa, smacked his lips, then said, “Who? Did he say who hired him?”   

“I don’t know! He didn’t say.”

North took another sip of cocoa. The goblin cringed.

“I swear he didn’t say! It was a major player, though, someone he didn’t want to make angry.”

“It’s probably Pitch again,” said Jamie, completely oblivious to his cocoa mustache. “That’s okay, I brought the boot I threw at him last time.”

“When did you have time to get your throwing boot?” Cupcake asked.

“I keep it in my backpack, just in case.” Jamie took another sip of cocoa. “I’m trying to be more prepared.”

All the monsters and mischief-makers in the room stared at the boy wide-eyed, their minds all blown by the idea of a kid that knew Pitch Black and wasn’t terrified of him.

“I’m sure,” North said to Mnug, “that if you were to know where Krampus would be found that you’d have already told me, yes?”

“I don’t know where he is. He had me do the drop-off but it’s not like he invited me to his home for tea and krumpets. That’s everything I know, I swear!”

At that, North reached out and...patted the goblin on the shoulder.

“Your help, it is greatly appreciated.” He reached into his coat and pulled out a very menacing … candy cane. “Candy cane?”

The goblin looked terrified to say no, but equally terrified to eat it. Ultimately fear of North himself wore out over any fear of the candy cane being harmful and the little goblin started gnawing away.

“Enjoy,” said North, and the merriment in his voice was...so infectiously genuine. “Keep up good work, Mnug. Except maybe less good work for enemies of the Guardians, yes? Is still room enough in this world for small kindnesses.”

Small kindnesses...perhaps like the way North was getting up and leaving the bar without putting his boot in Mnug’s face.

Between that and the fact that it really was a very good candy cane, Mnug was seriously considering giving up a life of crime.

* * *

“For monsters, those guys were pretty helpful,” said Jamie, as the Guardians returned to the sleigh and the stamping reindeer, which the passing pedestrian myths gave a wide berth.

“Needed to work on their cocoa, though,” said Cupcake. “It was kinda bitter.”

“Yes,” said North, “But they tried so hard. It was kind not to hurt their feelings.”

“You know they’re probably gonna shut that place down now, don’t you?” said Bunny, with a slight chuckle. “Now that they know we know we know where it is.”

“Eh.” North shrugged. “The thieves and the scoundrels, they will find a new place to congregate. Don’t they always?”

He and Bunny exchanged a look that suggested knowing a bit about congregating with thieves and scoundrels, and chuckled.

Behind them, the thieves and scoundrels fled from every door and window of the nameless bar, now a nameless abandoned building as the Guardians flew away from it.

* * *

“Huey, Louie, this way,” Jack said, marking another juncture, shaking the sting out of his hand as the skin started to heal over yet again. “I think I found a way forward.”

So far, judging from the marks he’d left himself, he’d recently been turned around at least five times. But now he was almost certain he’d found the right path to keep from going in circles yet again. This place...looked new. It was a long hallway, with an actual ceiling, but it was arched terribly high above, painted in a strange smear of colors that didn’t seem to have any form or substance to their design.

“Looks like somebody went a little crazy with the fingerpaints, huh guys?” he said to the skates.

They stopped in the air and tilted, as if looking upward.

Jack looked down again to watch where he was going. The floor was...strange here. It was all one massive, flat pane of smooth black stone, shiny and polished, like glass or the surface of water.

It seemed steady enough to walk on though, so Jack traipsed along carefully, his eyes drawn back to the ceiling again.

The longer he looked, the more it seemed as if the colors were moving, blending together in strange shifting shapes.

“Can’t say I think it looks that good. Jackson Pollack was never really my kind of -”

A sound like the cracking of ice rang out. Jack’s heart clenched in his chest as the floor fell out from under him.

He dropped into black water that obliterated his view of the surface. The water - no, this wasn’t water at all. Water wasn’t this dark. It wasn’t this thick. Water wasn’t this cold, even in the Antarctic, so cold that it brought Jack back to his last few moments of mortal consciousness under the ice of the pond three hundred years ago.

Jack clawed his way to the surface and gasped in ragged lungfuls of air, reaching blindly for something to float on. Even three hundred years after his death, his dread for water had kept him from learning to swim. He’d have been out of luck in this case, even if he had - no sooner had he touched the edge of the intact floor when _something_ under the water grabbed him and pulled him down. His skin burned at the _thing_ ’s contact. The not-water muffled his scream.

More things latched onto his ankles, stinging his skin like nettles. Jack clawed for the edge again, but the grasping hands yanked him under with only half a breath in his lungs.

He clawed his way nearly to freedom and was dragged away from it time and again, until his whole world was fear and the ache of his lungs. Adrenaline burned in his limbs as with a wild flail he finally kicked himself free and launched himself over the broken edge, heaving himself onto the intact floor. He scrambled away from the edge, trailing a streak of black inklike liquid. The water dripped from him, clear until it pooled on the floor. When he’d distanced himself from the edge, he stood and ran.

The floor groaned under his feet the minute he stood, cracking and giving way behind him. He picked up speed but the cracks raced ahead of him as he ran, and the floor broke apart. Jack’s agility was all that saved him, given that much of it had less to do with his powers and more to do with 300 years of climbing on things. He darted nimbly from one stable patch of floor to the other, barely stumbling where others would have fallen.

The last few yards of floor still cracked under him, until Jack had nothing solid left to push off of but the wall. He kicked off the wall opposite to where he intended to land and threw himself, finally safe, into a new hallway. The floor held, solid and stone again underneath him, like the rest of the floor in the rest of the maze.

Jack didn’t stop. He picked himself up and ran, on and on until his legs ached and his lungs ached even worse. He finally collapsed against a wall when sheer exhaustion stopped him from running any farther.

He coughed, his throat still raw from the near-drowning, and leaned his head against the wall. He tried to breathe, hating that he still felt like he couldn’t, even now that the danger was gone. He didn’t bother pushing his damp hair out of his eyes. Through the strands, he saw the skates twirling pensively nearby, trembling with agitation just as Jack was.

Except that it wasn’t agitation Jack felt. It was fear that ran deep down into his bones.

If he didn’t get out of the maze soon, if the others didn’t find him and he couldn’t find his way out, he was going to suffer. That much he knew.

“Boy, a rescue sure would be nice right about now,” he murmured, the lighthearted words betrayed by the quiver in his voice. “Before there’s no me left to rescue.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay, folks. This was a very busy summer. Things have finally died down for us a bit now that it's over. 
> 
> Kate and I will be co-writing an original book together and are working on our own individual books and I just want to periodically make note of that and see if anyone would be interested in being on our mailing list to be notified when we self-publish. If you would be, just pop an email to kirajlane@gmail.com to be added to the list. We'll only contact you for major information in the future, like release dates. If you like our fic, our original stuff - which is in the vein of things like HTTYD, RoTG, and Discworld - will be right up your alley.

“How many has he had so far?”

“I - I don’t _know_.”

“Torg’s never going to win. Not against _him_. Why did he even agree to the contest anyhow?”

“He just came out of nowhere and challenged him. You know Torg, he doesn’t ever back down from a challenge.”

“Gotta give ‘im credit for trying. I’ll miss him when his livers kick out.”

The bystanders in the Prancing Pegasus, one of the most popular bars in El Dorado, were well used to watching the occasional drinking contest, but this one was record-breaking - both in terms of how many drinks had been consumed and how legendary the drinkers were.

Rumor had it that Torg the troll hadn’t lost a drinking contest in five hundred consecutive years, despite competing against thousands of worthy opponents, including, allegedly, Tezcatzontecatl, one of the four hundred drunken rabbits known as the Centzon Totochtin.

He had not, however, ever competed against the living legend that was Nicholas St. North.

Which mean he’d also certainly never competed against him when he was trying to get information that would allow him to find someone that he cared for greatly.

“Ha!” North laughed after he downed yet another shot, wobbling slightly in place. That would have been a sign to worry the Guardians, if Torg had not already been leaning heavily on the tabletop. “I am thinking - I am thinking that this may as well be water. This is what I’m thinking.”

“Blugrhfsdsddfafa.”

“What’s that?” asked North, holding an unsteady hand to his ear. “Is that the sound of defeat coming out of your mouth?”

“Asafsdsadasafasdsa.”

It sure wasn’t the sound of coherent sentences. Torg was far beyond those now.

He still made a game attempt at downing his shot. It almost made it into his mouth instead of all over his shirt. Almost. Just like he almost flopped into his chair instead of landing heavily on the floor. Sandy peered over him thoughtfully, then gestured Anansi closer. The Spider prodded the downed troll with one dark leg, then nodded once to the Sandman. Both turned and gave the Cossack thumbs up.

“Ha!” North crowed. “A winner is me! Shostakovich -”

He wove so widely that Tooth jerked to the side, and Bunny braced to catch North if he collapsed. But his eyes stayed open, and he waved off his compatriots’ worried looks as he wobbled back upright in his chair.

“The winner will have cocoa now,” said North waving now to the barkeep. “The loser will have cocoa as well, but, shall we say, a _special_ blend.”

He briefly failed to dig into the pocket of his massive coat, but finally succeeded in extracting a little pouch. He held it out to the waiter, who made the error of taking a deep sniff from the pouch upon receipt. He nearly fell back himself, steadying himself against the bar as he handed it to the tender.

“Do you think it’s the cocoa that gives him all that fortitude?” Cupcake whispered to Jamie. Jamie shook his head.

“He only has cocoa afterward,” he said. “I think it’s probably the milk. He drinks a lot of milk on Christmas.”

“I guess,” Cupcake answered as Sandy picked up one of the remaining filled shot glasses, sniffed it curiously, and took a sip.

He immediately passed the less-one-sip shot to Anansi, thumping his chest with a fist, coughing up a little cloud of dreamsand. Anansi, a little less curious than the golden man, grinned and held the glass out to Bunny.

“What do you say, old friend?” he asked, teeth flashing white against his dark skin. “I bet it would-”

“If you say _‘put hair on your chest_ ,’ you’ll be wearing it,” Bunny answered. Jamie and Cupcake (and the rest of their audience) tittered, and still-grinning, Anansi set the shot back down on the table. North picked it up and wagged a finger at Jamie and Cupcake.

“I do not want to hear either of you trying this for ten years,” he said sternly. “Naughty List. I am watching.”

“Yes, North,” said Jamie

“Yes, Santa,” said Cupcake.

“Naughty List,” the Cossack repeated, setting the glass down again firmly on the tabletop to punctuate his sentence. “Also, unsavory sorts may attempt to take advantage. Drink with friends, or with friends nearby. Yes?”

“Yes, North.”

“Yes, Santa.”

The waiter returned, placing a mug of hot cocoa in front of North and dispatching another to one of Torg’s friends. It took three people in total to sit Torg up enough for the waiter to pour a little sip of the special cocoa into the troll’s mouth.

A little bit went a long way apparently, because Torg’s eyes popped open wide, his face turned red, and he sat up with a noise that sounded a little bit like:

“HHHHHWWWWOOOOOOOOARGH!”

“Glad to have you back with us,” said North, genial and starting to sober. “Come, sit. Now that I’ve won your wager, we have much to talk about. ”

Torg shook as he got to his feet, swaying a bit before slumping into his chair. Despite losing, he looked incredibly impressed. He even laughed a hearty laugh at the sight of North sitting there calmly drinking his cocoa.

“Well done, old man! No one’s beat me in over five hundred years!” crowed Torg. “Fair’s fair, you bested me. What exactly did you need to know?”

“There is someone I am looking for. I am told you have many friends, Torg - friends that might be able to tell me where this person is.”

“Krampus,” Torg ground out between jagged teeth. His tone of voice showed he had no love for the myth, but that hadn’t been enough for Torg to roll on him. Information was something he only gave to those he respected and respect had to be earned. “I know someone who would know where he is, but it’ll be dangerous for you to talk to her. I can tell you where to find her, though.”

North sat forward in his chair. “Your help would be _most_ appreciated.” 

* * *

Jack rounded a corner and found himself in space. He had only a second to recognize that he was floating among the stars before something bright gold streaked past his face and dragged him into its wake. 

“Ahh!”

Jack flailed to right himself as he slipped along behind the - it looked like a comet, but less like the comets kids learned about in school, the frozen rocks with vaporizing ice tails, and more like a comet a kid might draw with their crayons - a gleaming golden pod with soft, rounded edges, trailing golden dust as it flew through space. The sight of the golden dust was heart-stoppingly familiar.

Jack twisted to see through one of the gold-dusted windows.

“...Sandy?”

The figure inside moved too frantically for Jack to see him clearly, but there was no mistaking that little sand-drop silhouette. Even though Jack knew he was only seeing an illusion, his heart still leapt hopefully at the sight of the Sandman.

Cruising through space. That was...unexpected.

And the spaceship wasn’t following an easy, dreamy path like Jack might have expected, either. It hurtled along through the stars with Sandy moving with harried efficiency at the helm, pulling Jack along in a zigzag wake. Jack soon saw why - bursts of nothingness streaked past, blotting out the stars, narrowly glancing off the ship’s gold-dust shield as Sandy dodged them.

One finally struck, cracking through the golden halo that surrounded the ship. It veered wildly, and bent its trajectory towards a mottled blue-and-white planet looming in the sky ahead.

The veering of the ship spun Jack around so that he got a full view of the formless blackness chasing Sandy’s starship. Blobs of it lashed out at the ship, narrowly missing, and eerie blobs of dirty yellow light flashed in it, as if through thick smog.

Jack looked over his shoulder. The blue planet had loomed large into view, and he realized both the ship and the black mass - and he, as well - were going to crash into it.

“Ahh!” Jack flailed uselessly, which only sent him ping-ponging into the interior of the ship’s shields and then back.

“Oof!”

He managed to hook a hand onto one of the fins of the ship and held on for dear life.

The starship skidded to a crunchy-sounding stop across the surface of the rugged planet, carving a long path through the dense trees where it landed, flinging Jack free so that he skidded to a stop and landed in a giant mud puddle. The blobby fear-mass didn’t carve a path - it smashed a crater into the Earth, flattening the trees and almost burying Jack in a slurry of wood and mud. Clambering to safety himself, Jack caught sight of Sandy emerging from the broken ship, and the two of them both looked back towards the crater.

For all that his ship had crashed, Sandy looked only slightly alarmed as a tall figure raised itself from the smoke of the crater and stalked his way with his yellow-tinged eyes flashing. He glanced around the half-destroyed forest, bouncing slightly in place as he swept up a sand cloud to spirit himself away.

The shadowy figure jolted into pursuit, leaving traces of itself in its trail as if it were cutting the air open to bleed around it. The shifting nightmare smoke peeled off Pitch Black’s skin as he pursued the Sandman across a vast and primeval forest. Jack found himself carried along after them through the air, as if tugged by an invisible rope, across the forest which was so large, there was something primordial about it. The air around him felt different, too - cleaner than any air he’d ever smelled, as if the forest - and the world - were still new.

Sandy looked over his shoulder, his cheery brow furrowed with consternation as he saw Pitch in pursuit. He picked up the pace, but so did Pitch, closing the distance between them. Mountains loomed in the distance, at the edge of the forest, and Sandy zipped up and over a fork between them. They dodged mountains like pinballs, trailing sand and pure fear through the range, until the ground beneath them opened up into a wide grassland. Sandy suddenly stopped running.

The look in his eyes made Pitch skid to a halt in mid-air, even before his first lash from the sandwhip.

The king of nightmares tried to fight back with his mass of fearful smoke, but it was blowing away in the wind that shook the grass, while Sandy’s mass of dreamsand maintained its volume. The boiling essence of fear around Pitch took rudimentary shapes, but only with extreme effort on Pitch’s part, and not even fast enough to fully form before Sandy struck them down. Pitch hadn’t mastered his powers, yet - and he didn’t have the nightmare sand to call on. Even Sandy’s sandforms seemed strangely loose, compared to the shapes Jack knew him for creating with them - as if this fight had taken place so long ago that even Sandy was still a few tricks shy of mastering his sand.

But he was more than a master enough for Pitch. His final lash threw the not-yet-Nightmare-king against the side of the mountain, then, for good measure, he threw Pitch into the air and yanked him back down on a strand of glittering sand. Pitch’s impact left another crater, and the last of the fear essence blew away on the wind as he lay, dazed.

And just like that, the battle was over. Jack wondered why Sandy had even been running from Pitch at all.

The little sandman dusted his hands off as he landed at the side of the crater. He looked at Pitch, shaking his head with an expression that said the Nightmare King should have known better.

“He really should have,” Jack agreed, with a short laugh, but Sandy didn’t hear him.

Sandy lifted his finger to as if address Pitch, a very measured, calm gesture. The Nightmare King groaned, stirred, then stilled again. Sandy waited until he opened his eyes again and, when he was sure he had Pitch’s attention, he opened his mouth and shocked Jack nearly out of his skin.

“Stop following me,” he said in a voice that was calm and sonorous and strangely deep.

_ "Stop following me," he said in a voice that was calm and sonorous and strangely deep._

_[art by seekingskywhales](http://seekingskywhales.tumblr.com/tagged/reb's%20art%20adventures) _

It was all he said before nodding and floating away from the stunned Pitch, back toward the wreckage of his ship.

Jack had been crouching on a tree branch nearby as he watched the fight, but the sound of Sandy’s voice had him slipping off in surprise, clinging to it again only just before he fell. It felt almost...sacrilegious. Whatever reasons had driven Sandy to endless silence had to have been personal and meaningful and it felt wrong for Jack to hear his voice without his permission.

Pitch, bewildered, waited until Sandy was gone to rise from his crater and put a spindly hand to his head. Jack watched him crawl out, following Sandy’s golden trail back to the wreckage of the spaceship. Sandy was picking through the ship when Pitch arrived, tossing parts aside, the concern on his face still mild, even though he clearly was not salvaging anything from the wreck. Pitch slunk through the shadows, his yellowed eyes glittering with malice, his ragged-nailed fingers curved into grasping claws as he slipped down a long shadow cast by a tree behind Sandy -

At the very last minute, the Sandman turned around and walloped his would-be throttler in the gut with a sandblast that glittered in the light of the setting sun. Pitch slammed against a treetrunk and sank to the ground with a groan. Sandy hovered in front of him, a little more frustrated.

“What did I say?” he asked. His hands were spread, his eyebrows raised in an expression of disbelief at Pitch’s raw determination to get his butt kicked. It was all he said before going back to his salvage.

The vision went on, through scene after scene of Pitch and Sandy cohabitating on the strangely empty Earth, Sandy salvaging from materials in his spaceship a little home in the clouds, while Pitch ever slunk at the edges of the light.

“This is about fear, isn’t it,” Jack said, finally. He said it mostly to himself, but maybe partly to the ice skates.

“Well I mean, obviously the whole maze is - but this isn’t _my_ fear.” He gestured to the vision - where Pitch had provoked an almost exasperated Sandy into yet another curbstomping. “I don’t know how Pitch’s memories are in here, but this is somehow about _his_ fear, too.”

Maybe the key to his salvation was figuring out _why._

* * *

Sometimes, a door would slam shut behind Jack. 

This was curious, because there were no doors on any of the openings when he walked through them. Nevertheless, sometimes he would walk through an opening, and hear a door slam shut behind him before he’d even had time to turn around and see it appear.

The room was always the same. It massed with colored lights, like rainbow fireflies buzzing in place. At first, Jack had been wary of them, remembering the room of razor glass flowers, but the lights never harmed him. They never did anything but be beautiful.

Jack had realized this by the time he’d reached the room a third time, after witnessing Sandy and Pitch’s crash-landing on Earth. Now, the sound of the door slamming shut behind him was almost a comfort - it meant, if he was right, something pretty that didn’t want to hurt him. The ice skates spun over his head as he slid down the door, resting for a moment as the lights gleamed above him.

He reached out to touch one, and it vibrated softly and floated away, powered along by his touch, like it was floating through airless space. It bounced against another light, and the motion transferred, the first rebounding off the second, sending it spinning slowly through the room. If Jack stayed, perhaps soon the whole room would be alive with gentle motion.

He was tired. Tired of walking, of seeing things he knew were not his to see, tired of seeing nothing that was beautiful. So he did stay until then - just waiting, getting his strength back, as the lights danced.

The door always slammed behind him when he entered the room and he knew it would slam behind him again when he left. But somehow, he always found it again.

He didn’t know which to care about more - this sign that he was going in circles, or this reassurance that there was still something, even if it was just one thing, in the maze that wouldn’t do anything but soothe him.

When he couldn’t justify sitting and enjoying the lights any longer (sitting peacefully was a relief, but it also wasn’t going to get him out of the maze), he finally moved on through the room, sighing as the door slammed shut behind him. The clang of its closing was loud, and it echoed off the scene laid before Jack.

He stood in a desert, stretching out as far as the eye could see. The flat plain around him was spiked thickly with dead trees, but in the distance, the sands rose up into endless dunes, as bright and pale as snow banks. The dead trees looked like they’d been scorched by fire, but Jack couldn’t see how they’d still be standing if they’d been burned by anything fiercer than the light of the sun.

Jack turned around to look for the door only to find that it was gone. All he saw behind him were more dunes. He turned back to the macabre grove in front of him.

“This isn’t ominous at all,” he said to Huey and Louie, who looked almost timid as they floated overhead. 

Jack took a few cautious steps towards the trees, stopping as a crackling noise and a rush of hot air hit him. The trees were suddenly all on fire.

 

 

 

_ art by Kira _

Jack stopped, his jaw hanging open for a moment. “Oh, no thank you,” he said, turning problem to walk across the sand dunes directly behind him. He was going around this big creepy flaming forest of dead trees, thanks.

Jack trudged unsteadily over several dunes before climbing over the last to find...

The flaming forest spread out in front of him again. He rolled his eyes skyward and without a word, trudged off to the right this time, hoping to go around the dunes, but after climbing over a particularly steep one -

The flaming forest was there again, waiting for him down below in all its sinister glory. 

Jack pressed his fingertips to the bridge of his nose.

“Of course I have to walk through the sinister, flaming forest of dead trees. Why did I expect anything different?” he asked the skates.

They both bobbed in the air in a movement that resembled a shrug.

Jack tilted his shoulders back, took a deep breath and walked towards the flaming forest. Even though every instinct told him to run, he didn’t. He’d learned through experience that running wasn’t always the best move in the maze. Sometimes the movement only caught the attention of things that liked the chase.

He took his steps slowly, his toes sinking into the hot sand, watching the flaming trees closely. They did nothing but burn, making odd, groaning sounds as he walked. That didn’t reassure him. He wasn’t going to be reassured until he was through the flaming forest. 

Actually, he probably wasn’t going to be reassured until he was out of the maze altogether.

The trees groaned even louder as they burned and suddenly, one exploded. Bright fragments of wood shot in all directions, just barely missing Jack. The rest of the trees began to groan louder as Jack yelped and cowered.

Okay, so this wasn’t one of the situations where running was bad. Running was good here, running was definitely good.

Jack broke into a sprint, hopping over the flaming remains of the tree in the sand. All around him, the trees started exploding, sending flaming splinters and bits of wood in every direction. For the most part, the explosions caused a bunch of narrow misses, but one of them sent a huge chunk of flaming wood right at his head. Before he could even think about dodging, the skates darted in and knocked it out of the air.

Finally, he was through. After climbing over the dunes on the other side of the flaming forest, he saw a tunnel that led down into a place that seemed filled with the same kind of stone of the rest of the maze and he bolted down out of the heat, away from the terrifying, flaming explosions.

Jack sank down to sit with his back against a stone wall, taking respite in the blissful cool. The skates were still with him, though now they were smudged with soot and looking just a little scorched.

“Thanks, guys,” Jack panted out, looking up at them gratefully.

There was no reason for them to have done that. If they were just enchanted things meant to be pretty, why would they have the means to act on his behalf? Maybe they were sentient somehow. Maybe there was some invisible spirit guiding them along.

Whatever the case, one thing Jack knew for sure was that if - _when_ he got out of here, he was making sure Huey and Louie got out, too. 

* * *

Another number on the maze wall, another fingerprint in the book. The walk through the maze had been dark and quiet for a while. No rooms with menacing things, nothing exploding in his face, not even the room of glowing lights. 

Jack was glad to have not run into anything menacing in a while, but the quiet was still unnerving. He was that much more relieved when he turned a corner and saw a now-familiar glowing figure ahead.

The strange starlit boy was there again, balancing on the handle of his spear. The point was stuck in the cracks between two stone tiles on the floor. It was strange to see the boy balancing, looking almost happy as he wobbled there on one foot. It was the same sort of thing Jack did with his staff during periods of boredom.

Jack approached quietly, hoping that he’d manage to keep the boy still long enough to talk to him. He was willing to grab him this time if he had to, but the boy shook his head as if to say, ‘I know what you’re thinking, and don’t even think about it.’ His eyes were filled with something that might have been pity.

Pity for who? Him, in the maze? Or pity for what he was about to show Jack next?

“These things you’ve shown me...about Pitch,” Jack asked quietly. “What do they mean? Why are they here? And who are you?”

The boy shook his head again, as if in great sadness. The pity must have been for Jack, he realized. He had to be a sight just then, his clothes ragged and torn by the exploding trees, face smudged with dust and dirt.    

“Are you lost like I am?” Jack asked. The boy simply shook his head, flipped off of the end of his spear, and landed lightly on his feet. He pulled it out of the floor and ran, looking back as if he wanted Jack to follow.

Jack ran like he always did, wondering why, despite not knowing who the boy was, despite not knowing if he was a threat or lost like he was, it always seemed to feel like they were playing a game of tag together. He turned a corner and found himself under a beautiful night sky. The boy wasn’t there anymore.

Jack knew somehow that the sky he was looking at wasn’t Earth’s sky. It was tinged purple and the stars were thicker. They glowed brighter than Jack had ever seen them anywhere in the world, even before electric light had polluted the sky.  

Looking around him only confirmed the other-ness of this place. The trees were a strange blue color, and they twisted in looping shapes that no Earth trees ever had. The grass was tinged with a pink so bright it was visible in the starlight and in the light of the strange glowing lanterns that had been set around the camp.

Jack was fairly certain it was a camp, at least. A military camp, maybe - there were tents and guards and people in uniforms nearly the same as the ones General Kozmotis and his friend had worn. Filled with curiosity that burned in a way that was nearly physical, Jack moved around the camp, searching for...

“Koz! Hey, Koz! How’s the kid?”

Jack saw the soldier from before, Kozmotis Pitchiner’s friend. He was younger now, and his gold-toned face was a lot less cheerful in this memory.

Kozmotis was younger, too. Eerily so - he couldn’t have been ten years older than Jack. Jack  didn’t know what to make of his expression, weary in a way that rang deeply familiar to him. There had been times growing up, he remembered, when his mother’s face had been lined with such deep concern, usually when she was worried about keeping him and his sister fed. It was the expression adults got when they worried deeply about children.

“Not...well,” Kozmotis said ruefully. “Jem, he’s not talking. They brought him in, fixed him up, and he hasn’t said a word.”

“Well, you know the Star Herders. Their vocal cords have a bit of trouble with Common. He can probably understand it.”

“That’s not it,” said Kozmotis. This time he seemed far less concerned with formality, though that may have had to do with the fact that he had fewer little pins in his collar and bars on his chest. “After everything he saw... I can certainly imagine what it must have been like - we’ve been in the thick of it ourselves, but he’s hardly more than a child, even by Star Herder standards. I’m not sure he’s entirely...there.”

The tone of Kozmotis’ voice sounded absolutely mismatched with Pitch’s. It rang with deep compassion and concern, a tone like North might use when talking about a child in need. 

“Maybe you should try to talk to him,” Jem suggested.

“Me?”

“You’re the one who already has a kid.”

Jack sucked in a breath so suddenly he choked on his own spit. He coughed so much he almost missed Kozmotis’ response.

“Yes, but Rashena is Rashena. I don’t have to know how to talk to her. She’ll talk _at_ me no matter the situation. Pretty much incessantly. About every possible subject, from why the sky is indigo to whether or not moondogs can look up.” Though his words were wry, they were filled with a great deal of affection. “It’s really rather easy - I just have to _sit_ there. This is a _very_ different. What he needs is a counselor or a grief specialist -”

“And we don’t have one currently detached with us,” Jem pointed out. “C’mon, Koz, the kid needs somebody to talk to him. It needs to be someone patient and kind, someone that can pull off parental.”

Kozmotis sighed and looked towards the opening of one of the tents. “I suppose he does.” 

He stepped into the tent. Jack followed close behind him. It was a large tent, clearly meant to be used for medical purposes or for refugees of some kind. There were cots and blankets and little lanterns like the ones outside.

There was only one figure in the room, though, sitting alone on a cot, a blanket wrapped haphazardly around his shoulders. His spear leaned against the side of the cot. 

Jack inhaled sharply, but managed not to choke this time.

It was the boy who glowed like starlight. His eyes were blank and distant, and though the blanket had slid down his shoulders, he didn’t seem to notice.

Kozmotis stepped towards him slowly, trying to act non-threatening. His hands clenched and unclenched awkwardly at his sides. He was silent for a while, as if considering several things he might say.

Finally, when Kozmotis spoke, it was with a simple, “I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now, so I’m not going to pretend that I understand. I’ve lost loved ones and friends to the fearlings, but not -”

He broke off.

“I just want you to know that despite how it may feel at the moment, you’re not alone.” He took a seat on the cot opposite the glowing boy. “We came here to help you and your people and we’re going to make sure that you’re taken care of.” 

The glowing boy still stared into the distance, completely unresponsive.

“My name is Kozmotis. Kozmotis Pitchiner,” Koz went on. “What’s yours?”

The boy sat in silence. It seemed it would continue on, but he finally looked over at Kozmotis.

Then he spoke, presumably saying his name. Jack couldn’t understand it at all, it sounded as if it had a few hard consonants in it that were familiar, but otherwise, the noises that came from star-boy’s mouth were too resonate and musical to sound like spoken language. If the stars could laugh, that beautiful noise would have sounded like the boy’s name.    

“...I’m afraid I’m going to have a bit of difficulty pronouncing that,” Kozmotis said awkwardly. “I hope you understand.”

Koz’s befuddled apology made star-boy’s mouth twitch just slightly in amusement, but the expression quickly faded.

Kozmotis reached inside a pouch in his belt and pulled out a very space-age, magical...pen and paper. Jack had been expecting something slightly more sci fi. “You can understand Common, yes? Can you write it?”

The boy nodded and took the pen and paper and scribbled something on the page.

**You Coreworlders can’t enunciate to save your lives.**

Kozmotis moved over to sit next to the boy so he could read what he was writing more easily. Jack followed, looking over both their shoulders. When Kozmotis saw what the boy wrote, he laughed.

“I suppose in comparison to you, everything I say sounds like mush.”

The boy nodded once then resumed staring off into space again.

Kozmotis sat in silence for just a little while, and then finally said, “You are a remarkable young man, you know. When we found you, the spirit you showed, after everything -”

The boy started scribbling words frantically.

**Not special. Lucky. I was lucky, that’s all. I got to the light caves, no one else managed to.**

“I didn’t mean -” Kozmotis inhaled deeply, trying to figure out what he meant. “What I mean to say is that I’ve known of people that faced that kind of darkness and simply waited to die. We saw the dead fearlings on the way to the caves. We saw that there’d been a fight. If that was you...”

The boy scrawled out: **Some of us were outside the village when they came. We saw that the village was surrounded. I was the oldest. I tried to get the younger ones to the caves.**  

The next words were almost carved into the paper.

**I failed.**

“I’ve failed before, you know. I’m a captain of the Great Golden Army and I’ve failed many people before. No one is perfect, no one can win every battle.”

The boy scribbled: **I couldn’t protect my sister.**

Jack’s heart clenched in his chest and memories of the sound of ice cracking under a little girl’s feet almost drowned out Kozmotis’ response.     

“And I couldn’t protect my wife,” the captain said quietly, looking at the boy. “What matters is that you did all that you could. That’s all anyone could have asked of you. That’s all you could have asked of yourself.”

**What good is that? I tried to save them, I tried to lead them, but I made a mess of everything. I did everything wrong.**

“All we can do is try our best and if we fail, hope against hope that the people who were lost were at least comforted by the knowledge that someone cared enough to try to help them. I know that sounds like a very thin comfort, but one the other things we have are those who are still living. In dark times like these, we still have each other, all of us that stand opposed to them, all of those who try to protect one another. I know your people put a lot of stock in that, in interconnectedness, and - and community and the rest of us don’t feel any differently. There are so many people that are here for you now and we are going to take care of you.”

The boy’s shoulders started to shake and the noises he made that were his version of sobs made Jack feel as if he was being stabbed right between the ribs. The sound of the sobs obliterated every other idea in his head and left him with a single, nearly nonsensical thought:

That stars shouldn’t weep. 

The boy scribbled onto the paper and his words were blurred by the tears that fell on the page.

**What’s going to happen to me now?**

“I’m not sure where you’ll go, but if you’re willing to come with us, I promise you we’ll find someplace where you’re cared for. We won’t leave you here alone.”

The boy leaned into Kozmotis, sobbing piteously, and the man turned and wrapped his arms around him, holding him tightly.

“My dear boy - my dear, brave boy - I swear that we won’t leave you alone.”

The room suddenly shifted, blurring with the passage of time. The starlit boy was now asleep in his cot, the blanket pulled up over his shoulders. He had his spear still in hand as he slept.

Kozmotis stood off to the side, talking in a hushed voice with Jem Breen and someone else, a woman that looked familiar - the guard maybe, that Kozmotis had relieved in the first vision? She had no scar on her face in this vision but she looked mostly the same otherwise. Captain Helias? Captain Jelias? It was something like that.

“Lal, what do you think?” Jem asked of Jelias. Apparently, that was her first name. 

“What do I think of what?” she asked.

“About what should be done with the kid.”

“What is there to do? We can’t leave him here. Even if the fearlings don’t come back to finish the job, what kind of life is that, leaving him here in a veritable graveyard all by himself?” she said, crossing her arms. 

“Yeah, but we have to factor in what’ll happen if he’s brought back with us. Not that it’ll be the worst, but with our luck, those astropologist muckity-mucks all fascinated with Star Herder culture will want to make a study of him. We take him back and we’ll have no way of making sure he’s placed with a family that’ll do right by him. Not that anyone’d do wrong, but this is a delicate situation. The kid deserves people that’ll help him deal with all this.”

“Again, what else is there? I’m sure we can make it clear the kid’s going to need some kind of special accommodations - to be placed with a family that respects his culture. That’s all we can do - am I right, Koz?”

Kozmotis didn’t answer. He was staring over at where the boy slept. 

“Koz?” Lal nudged him now and he started.

“What? Oh. Yes. Yes, of course. What else can we do?” he said, and he looked back over at the boy, looking sad even in sleep. “I mean, the only other option, the only way to really ensure he’s truly cared for would be for - for...” He looked back over to them. “For one of us to volunteer to take him in as a ward. With how often we've been decorated, the Community Health Offices wouldn't dare say no."

He paused and seemed to come to a decision, one that was a little wild but seemed to make perfect sense to him. “I could volunteer for it. I’m due for a good deal of shore leave anyway - I’d have time to get him acquainted with Rashena, get him comfortable and settled in, arrange for his schooling...”   

Jem raised his eyebrows. “You sure about that, Koz?”

“Yes. Yes, of course. Why not?”

At that, Lal’s face broke into a crooked grin. “Because you’re a single father and one kid’s responsibility enough?”

“Have I ever struck you as someone that shies away from responsibility?” he said dryly.

Both Jem and Lal could only snort at that.

“Not in the least,” said Lal.

“Then, as long as he’s amenable to it, I’ll take him home with me. The matter’s settled.”

The world blurred again and now Jack was somewhere else entirely. He was now in the main foyer of rather spacious house and the starlit boy was being led in through the front door by Kozmotis, who was carrying two large bags with him.

“It’s a bit of a maze, but you’ll get used to it soon enough. It’s been in the family for generations - my grandfather was one of the advisors to Queen Kila during the Reformation. I’d honestly prefer something smaller and bit more humble but nostalgia keeps getting in the way of house-hunting, to be perfectly honest.”

The boy clung tightly to his spear as he walked into the foyer, and stood there awkwardly, wringing his hands on the handle. The size of the place seemed to leave him deeply discomfited.

“Now, my daughter and Nanny Gliggs should be in. Let’s see if we can hunt them down to introduce you all to each -”

“EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”

“Ah, that’d be Rashena right now,” Kozmotis said mildly. “Either that or Nanny Gliggs is practicing her dog whistling for the next moondog show. She raises thoroughbreds.”   

The source of the noise turned out to be a blur of movement and sound that might have once been a six-year-old child. Jack finally got a good look at her when she stopped moving, which was only when she’d jumped at Kozmotis in a hug that nearly bowled him over to the floor. Her skin was a dark bronze color that looked nothing like her father’s paler skintone, but her facial features were undeniably like Koz’s - she had the same facial structure, the sharp cheekbones and wide-set eyes. Even her nose protruded like his, though her mothers’ features seemed to have softened it a little.

Laughing, he dropped his bags and swept her up in a massive hug, kneeling on the floor to make it easier.

“Daddy daddy daddy daddy!” she babbled enthusiastically, the silver tips of her dreadlocks bobbing like little stars that were threatening to fall out of the sky because of the gravitational forces of her excitement.  

“Rashena Rashena Rashena Rashena!” he answered back and she laughed delightedly.

“Daddy, you’re silly.”

“Well, that’s your fault, isn’t it? I learned it from you.”  

The hugging went on for quite some time, before they finally pulled apart to deal with the boy standing there awkwardly with his spear.

“Rashena, I’d like to introduce you to someone.”

“This is him? This is the star-boy?”

Kozmotis nodded and turned to the boy, gesturing at his daughter with his hand. “This is my daughter Rashena.”

The girl walked over to him, cautiously at first, looking at the boy with wonder, but then she said, “If you’re going to be my brother, you need a name other than ‘star-boy.’ There are lots of stars and lots of boys, but only one you, so you need a name. That’s only fair.”

The boy looked oddly touched at that announcement, looking over at Kozmotis questioningly, as if asking, ‘I’m her brother already - It’s just that easy, huh?’

“Daddy couldn’t pronounce your name for me. Can you say it so I can hear what it sounds like?”

The boy said his name and just like before, it jingled all the way out of his mouth.

“There’s kind of word sounds in it. Like a ‘nuh’ sound and a ‘luh’ sound and a ‘tuh’ sound. Maybe we can just try to do the sounds as best as we can in Common. Nuhtuhluhtuh. Natalata. Nuuuhtalatatuh. Natlat.” Her mouth opened in a little ‘o’ of delight. “What if we call you Nightlight? You glow just like a nightlight and your name kinda sounds like that.”

“Darling, we can’t name him after a bedroom fixture,” was Koz’s dry answer to the idea. 

Nightlight raised a hand at Pitch, as if to say ‘Hold on a second’ and then took out the little pad of paper he kept tucked in his armor and the pencil and wrote on the paper. Jack angled his head and move closer to read the writing as he held it up. 

**What’s a night-light? I know what the words mean by themselves in Common but not what they mean together.**   

“Daddy, what’s it say? I gotta learn to read better so I can talk to him.”

“He’s asking what a night-light is,” Koz explained. “He knows the words but not what they mean together.”

“A night-light is a light that you put on when you go to bed,” Rashena explained, “before you go to sleep but after Nanny tucks you in and tells you bedtime stories, and it makes the night less scary and helps keep the fearlings away. A night-light lets you know you’re safe. Daddy says you tried to keep people safe back at your home, so -" 

“Rashena, that’s a sad subject for him," Koz said gently. "It's not very nice to bring it up." 

The boy shook his head again at Kozmotis and knelt down in front of the girl. He tried a few times to say the word and every time, it came out just a little too jingly, but the last time, he managed it, even if it still rang like little bells. 

**_“Nightlight,”_** he said, holding a hand to his chest, looking touched that she’d choose a name like that for him, a name that implied he protected people and held back the dark. It seemed as if it was a comfort. 

“Nightlight, you’re my brother now,” Rashena declared, like the idea was wrought in steel. She reached out and took him by the hand that wasn’t holding his spear. “So I’m gonna show you around and you can meet Nanny Gliggs and my pet glow-worm and then we can have dinner with daddy and then we can play outside, and then maybe we can read from my picture books because if you have to write on paper to talk, I need to read better so I can talk to you - and then we can go talk to Mr. Carmichal’s cat - he doesn’t talk back _or_ write but I think he understands people words...”

Kozmotis could only look on as his daughter dragged Nightlight away by the hand to explore the house. The boy followed behind happily, actually smiling, seeming incredibly amused at the girl’s...effervescence.

“Oh, Ahava, what have I gotten myself into?” he asked to seemingly no one, and then the vision faded.

Jack was in an empty room with the skates once again staring at empty walls. For a good while, he could only stand there in silence, trying to make sense of everything he’d just seen.

“He had a kid,” he finally said to himself. “He had a _kid_. He had a wife. And a _kid_.”

Jack’s nose suddenly wrinkled in disgust as he realized the implications of that. .

“ _Pitch_ had a kid,” Jack said, shuddering. “Gross.”

* * *

Back in the Siberian forest, the Guardians (and Jamie and Cupcake) gathered around as Bunny inspected tracks in the dirt, and after a moment, nodded. 

“Yep, chicken feet,” he said. “Torg’s sent us after Baba Yaga.”

“I haven’t seen her since Sandy and I convinced her to take the Enkidu Oath,” Tooth murmured, thoughtfully. She and Sandy exchanged small shrugs. “She might not be exactly _pleased_ to see us." 

“Babboo who?” Cupcake echoed.

“You might think of Baba Yaga as the wicked witch, who does you just enough wickedness to prepare you for those who are wicked without reservation,” Anansi said, rolling his eyes thoughtfully to the sky as he often did when seeking through his own head for a story. “Sometimes, the old woman who threatens to eat a child up has not eaten a child in _centuries._ ”

Jamie looked with skepticism at the deep - very deep - chicken footprints in the dirt. “And she has chicken feet?”

Anansi barked out a laugh. “Don’t be silly! Of course she has no chicken feet.” He added, as if it made perfect sense, “Her house does.”

“And she’s coming back this way, by the sound of it,” said Bunny, his ears flicking westward, as Jamie and Cupcake exchanged looks that said volumes about the silliness of houses with chicken feet.

“Baba Yaga has no quarrel with us,” said North, as the groaning of trees suddenly reached their ears, and the wind that had sent the trees groaning swept over them.

“She didn’t have quarrels with many who went into her hut and still they never came out,” Anansi reminded him, but North just grinned.

“Many stories you have yet to tell me, Anansi, but this one? This one, I am knowing since I was a boy smaller than Jamie. Hah!” North laughed at the memory. “Is one thing to hear story of the wise witch who lives in the dark woods, with her chicken-footed hut and her teeth of iron, when you are warm on the savannah - but I tell you, it is thing entirely different to hear the same story at the edge of that dark forest yourself.”

He stood in front of the party as the wind rose to a screech, and a small hut on chicken feet crashed through the trees. North looked it over with the same, unflapped smile.

“I have often wondered when fate would lead me to Baba Yaga’s door.”

The children stepped closer together, backing towards Tooth as they realized the wind wasn’t screeching, the house was. 

North held his ground as the screeching stopped. The chicken-footed hut dropped to the ground, and the sound of many locks unclicking filled the air before the door flew open.

The children jumped, but North only smiled. A wizened, skinny old woman with a nose so long, it seemed to lead her whole face past the door frame leaned on her broom in the doorway, glaring at the scene before her. Baba Yaga’s eyes alighted on the husky Cossack standing tall before her door, and she bared her black iron teeth in an enormous grin. 

Her cackle rattled the leaves around them. “Babushka eats well tonight! What are you waiting for, you slow fool?!”

North, undaunted, strode up the steps and into the hut. The door slammed like a punch behind him, and the locks clicked back into place. 

“...Were...Were we supposed to go with him?” Jamie asked, each syllable as slow as anything hauled out of a bog.

“Nope,” Anansi said, staring at the door as though he could see through it if he just tried hard enough. He heaved a sigh. “He’d better tell me what happened when he comes out. I only like secrets when I’m in on them.” 

* * *

Inside, sealed away from the Guardians, North crouched beneath Baba Yaga’s roof as she whirled on him, studying him more closely. The Cossack stood silently as Baba Yaga scrutinized him, her features wrinkling deeper and deeper into disappointment at what she saw.

“You do not have time to buy my help, you young fool,” she spat. “I don’t have time to test you now - and don’t believe for a moment I won’t.” she shook her long, bony finger in North’s face, so fiercely that North even stepped back, pressed against the water tank “When the time comes, oh the things I have to do about the house - ! But no, you’ve come to me with not a moment to spare, and the boy’s reputation is good -” she rolled her eyes. “And your reputation is good. Not that I abide by reputations.”

She sniffed her long nose. “Tools, and nothing more! But if you stay to play my games of truth, the boy’s reputation won’t even be that anymore. So you will have to be in my debt.”

North’s face had been flickering in concern as the old witch mentioned Jack, but it cleared as she came to the topic of debt. He stuck his hand out without a moment’s hesitation. “Deal, Babushka! I will do your impossible tasks, when we’ve rescued Jack.”

Baba Yaga curled her fleshless hand around North’s, squeezing it with surprising strength. “And if you do not succeed at them, why then,” her eyes glittered. “I will feast after all!” she reached out quickly and pinched North’s thick forearm, testing his flesh. Her iron teeth were bared in a horrible grin. “As I have not feasted, oh, in _centuries_. You will not be so tender as a child or a young maid, but -” she released his hand, shrugging. “We who have taken the Enkidu Oath don’t have much in the way of choice, now do we?”

She eyed North fiercely. He beamed under her assailing gaze. 

“Now,” he said. “As to Jack -”

“Yes, your little snowflake.” Baba Yaga turned away from North, rummaging through the cabinets lining her little hut. When she turned back to him, she held a handkerchief, a comb, and a mirror. She handed them to North, in that order. “When you leave my hut, drop the first of these. When you can no longer follow it, drop the next, and then again after that. When you have reached the end of how far my spells can take you, you will have found the one you must find next, to find the one you truly seek.”

North took them, pocketing them carefully. “Babushka, you have my thanks. And the thanks of the Guardians as well.” 

“Thanks!” Baba Yaga spat into the sink. “Did thanks ever fill my water tank? Or make the soup for my dinner? It’s not your thanks I want! When you come back, you will work for me as you would if I had time to test you, and if you do not, Guardian or no, such a curse I will place upon you!” she shook her finger again, backing North against the door. “Now go! You do not have time to be threatened! Locks, unlock!”

The door unlocked of its own accord, and fell open behind North. He sprawled on the forest path with a thud, looking up just in time to see the door shut and the chicken-footed hut whirl and stomp off through the suddenly windy forest.

* * *

Jack rounded a corner and heard another door slam behind him. He blinked, surprised to see the room of floating colors again. It seemed he’d barely left the same room five minutes ago. 

Except - 

Something was off. The last time he’d been in this place, the walls of the maze had been made of something else. The rough black granite had scraped threads loose in his hoodie when he leaned against it. The walls here were a pale, smooth substance, the a dull color unsettlingly like age-stained bone.

The last times he’d been surrounded by the lights, too, it seemed like every color across the spectrum had been present. Now there wasn’t a single glimmer of blue. The absence left the still-full room seeming, in comparison, a little empty.

“Well,” Jack said, as the skates stood in place. “At least this means we’re not walking in circles, right, Footwear Friends?”

When he looked down, the image of the boy - of Nightlight - stood at the other side of the colored lights, looking straight at him.

“So, no time to enjoy the lights?” Jack asked, not expecting an answer. He didn’t get one. Nightlight spun on his heel and ran, and Jack darted after him. The hall before him went dark as the door slammed behind and then lit up again.

Soldiers moved through the hallways of what looked like some kind of ship, passing through Jack like people once always had. The feeling instinctually made him clutch at his chest. Jack thought his surroundings looked all very naval as he looked around, all metal grating and narrow hallways and endless metal pipes, but a glance through a window made it clear that this ship wasn’t one that went anywhere near water.

Through the porthole he saw a sun, taking up most of his view of space. The ship was floating around it, dipping in and out of the great halo of light that circled it like a whale occasionally surfacing for air.

“Whoa,” he said quietly, hands pressed against the glass.

He’d been many places in his long life, but short of stowing away on Apollo 11, he’d never really had a way of getting up into space.

This wasn’t space as anyone on Earth knew it, though. The way jets of plasma curled out in beautiful patterns from the nearby star made this look far more like the skies that might be illustrated in a children’s book.

“I love refueling days,” said a familiar voice and Jack turned to see Jem Breen yet again, though he looked a bit younger this time.

“They drive me mad,” said Kozmotis, who was walking side by side with him once more. “All this sitting around with nothing to do.”

“It must be devastating to you, having to miss out on opportunities for promotions.”

Kozmotis, now the most casual Jack had seen him, simply whapped Breen in the ribs, making him laugh. “When I sit around,  I prefer to be sitting around _at home_. And these Luna class ships take ages to refuel.” 

“Well, you can thank Tsar Lunar personally for that. Last class he designed before his son was born and he made that monstrosity that was in the news.”

“It was a monstrosity, I saw a picture, it was _enormous._ All to run off and explore the universe with his family - which is insane, really.”

“Well, if you were going out there in the big, bad universe to see all the wonders in it and had your family with you, you wouldn’t be taking them in an economy-sized ship, would you? Not with the fearlings out there,” Jem pointed out logically. “It’s supposed to be impossible to break into.”  

“Let’s hope it doesn’t break down near a planet or the poor sods living on it will mistake it for a _moon_.”

Jem laughed at that.

Jack perked up, his interest piqued, but the two steered the conversation elsewhere and he had to trot to keep up with their long solders’ strides.

“Anyway,” Koz went on. “I’ll see you in the mess later. Like I said, if I’m going to be sitting still I’d rather be sitting still at home and since I can’t be at home, stellargraph messaging is the next best thing.”

“Give my regards to the missus and the little lady.”

Kozmotis smiled at that as he slipped into his quarters and Jack slipped in behind just before the door slid shut. The room was rather spartan and very, very cramped. Clearly, Kozmotis had rank enough to have a room of his own but this was apparently long before he got those shiny general pips on his collar.

He sat down in front of a strange device that looked like the communications devices that had always showed up in those old sci fi movies, except its design was a bit more mechanical-looking in nature. Golden gears were visible, chugging away as Kozmotis sat down, relaxed in his chair, and dialed home.

It made strange little blipping sounds until an image flashed on the screen of an older woman, maybe in her forties, with silver skin and white hair. Jack supposed this might be the nanny - Nanny Gliggs, wasn’t it? - that Kozmotis had spoken of in one of the other visions.

“Hello, sir, lovely to see you this morning. Shore leave, I take it?”

“Good morning, Nanny. Pit stop. We’re refueling so we’ve got some free time even though it’s on ship. Is Rashena awake?”

A loud squealing noise came from somewhere else in the house. It was delighted squealing, the kind of squealing a small child made when they were entertaining themselves.

Kozmotis laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

“I’ll go get her, sir,” said the woman, looking equal parts fond and wry, as if she was thinking ‘It’s not so funny when you’re the one dealing with it every day.'

“Rashena, dear, your father’s on the stellargraph.”

The pitter-patter of little running feet reached the speakers before Rashena reached the viewing screen. Her starry-haired, bronzed face image filled the screen as she brought her face close to the camera. She looked just a bit younger than she’d been when Jack saw her last, like this had taken place a year or two before Pitch brought home Nightlight. “Daddy!”

Koz cracked a smile at her delight. “Rashena,” he said. He spoke her name like he was keeping it safe for her.

“Daddy, did you get my message?”

Koz looked for a moment at a loss. “Your - message?”

Rashena’s beaming smile dropped into a disappointed frown. “You didn’t watch my message.”

“I’m sorry, Darling,” Koz said. “Things get so busy out here in the field.” 

“You need to check your messages more,” Rashena admonished. “What if I left you one and I said something important and you missed it?” 

“Did you say something important in your message?”

“Oh yes,” Rashena nodded emphatically. “Lots of important things. You should go watch my message so you know what they are.”

“Rashena, that’s not practical. I can’t listen to your message _while_ I’m talking to you.” 

Rashena huffed her disappointment, fixing her father with a pouty expression that said, without speaking, ‘Did I _ask_ you what was practical?’

“Do you -” Koz paused. “Do you want me to hang up, watch your message, then call you again?”

Rashena nodded emphatically. “Yeah, go do that.”

Kozmotis looked halfway between charmed and consternated. “All right, then, I’ll do that.” 

“Call back _right_ after you watch it!” Rashena insisted.

“Right after,” Kozmotis agreed.

“Love you,” Rashena said, matter-of-fact, as she reached across the screen to awkwardly turn off the conversation from her end.

Koz’s smile as he fiddled with the dials to call up his messages was small, but almost like the smile of someone dreaming. It was helpless and unconscious and Jack almost felt the same guilt at seeing it that he had at hearing Sandy’s voice.

If all this was real, if this wasn’t the maze just messing with his head and it had actually happened, and if this man seemed to be Pitch before he’d become Pitch, then what had happened to him? What horrific thing had turned him into the kind of monster that would back a child into an alley and threaten to snuff them out like a candle?

And, Jack wondered with a twist of his gut, what had happened to the little girl who clearly meant so much to him?

Rashena’s message, while important to her, was fairly mundane. She hmm’d and dawdled on the screen, recounting her day at the park - until Nanny Gliggs’ voice offscreen prompted her to remember why she’d called.

“Didn’t you get a surprise today?” the nanny asked. Rashena’s wide grey eyes widened a little more as she remembered.

“Yes!” the little girl ducked out of view, returning with a gold-wrapped package. “I got a present from Daddy! I got your surprise!”

She held the package up to the screen. The gold wrapping glittered, even through the view of the camera. “But I’m not going to open it,” Rashena declared, pulling the present back, “until you can watch me open it. So hurry up and call because I’m waiting to be fair, so you should call soon to be fair!” 

“Too much longer a message, and your father won’t have time to call, dear,” her nanny chided gently. Rashena nodded urgently.

“Bye, Daddy! Call soon!” As Nanny Gliggs reached in front of her to turn off the device, she leaned around the matron’s arm. “ _I really wanna open it!”_

Rashena was bouncing in her seat when Koz called her a second time.

“ _Did you see it?”_  she squealed.

Koz had repressed his smile somewhat. He nodded. “I did, but darling, it’s not practical to ask me to call twice. You could have told me all that in my last call.”

Rashena’s enthusiasm diminished. “I wanted you to see my message.” She didn’t sound upset yet. In fact, oddly for a little child, she sounded matter-of-fact, as if she were defending her position, more than justifying herself. 

“These calls use valuable energy that could be used to keep the starship moving so that we can help protect people from fearlings.”

Rashena started to pout slightly, her defense starting to wilt under her father’s stern practicality.

Kozmotis sighed. “Don’t you still have a surprise to open?”

Rashena brightened slightly at the distraction. “Yes. It’s been sitting right here, all week. I didn’t open it!” she pulled the golden box into view, shoving it up to the camera, showing her father the unbroken seams. “I didn’t even peek!”

Kozmotis’ smile flickered back. “Very patient,” he said, approval in his voice. “Go ahead.”

Rashena tore into the package with all the enthusiasm of a child at Christmas. The golden paper fluttered away in child-sized scraps to reveal a silver box almost beautiful enough to be a gift itself. Rashena paused, gasping with delight at the elegant traceries on the box.

“That’s not the surprise,” Kozmotis urged. “Open it.”

Rashena pulled the lid off the box. Jack’s eyes widened as she pulled out another box - the same music box he’d toyed with earlier in the maze. It glinted gold in the light, designs of stars and galaxies splayed across the lid, carved so intricately that every time she moved her hand it seemed that they were swirling.

“Keep going,” Kozmotis urged. She flipped the lid open. Music slightly, but not entirely, like that Jack had heard before poured out from the box, and Rashena pulled out a gleaming golden pendant.

No - she flipped it open. It was a locket.

“That’s us!” she squealed, pointing at the picture inside. Jack craned his neck to see, but couldn’t get a glimpse of the portrait.

“Yes,” Kozmotis agreed. “Your mother thought it would be nice to always have us close to your heart.”

“Do you think that too?” Rashena asked, as she fiddled with the clasp.

“Of course,” said the stoic soldier.

The little star-haired girl clutched the locket close to her heart, her smile suddenly subdued.

“Then how come you won’t come home?”

“I’m sorry, dear, but it’s less that I won’t and more that I can’t. I have a duty to uphold. When you’re older you’ll understand.”

“I don’t want to be older then.”

“Well, someday you’re going to be. I’m sorry, but I can’t come home right now. I have shore leave coming up soon, though, and both your mother and I will be home to see you.”

“You’re being a poophead.”

“Rashena -”

“Only poopheads won’t come home.”

“Rashena, darling, I know it’s difficult sometimes, but -”

“Poophead!”

“Rashena -”

There were tears in her eyes now. “I’m going to play with my glow-worm,” she said and she ran off before Koz could get in another word. 

He sighed and after a moment of waiting to see if she’d come back, he hit a button that cut off the message.

After a minute of sitting there, he dialed someone new. Another minute or two, and a woman appeared on the screen, smiling. Her face was freckled like a night with stars - literally. Her skin was the endless blackness of deep space, and silver flecks gleamed across her high cheekbones like flakes of mica. Her hair was a stunning silver web of ornate braids. She was wearing some kind of uniform, also in shades of red, black, and gold like all the soldiers wore, but it looked far less like a military uniform and more like something off of a show like Star Trek.  

“Hello there, handsome.” 

Kozmotis sighed like a smitten schoolboy. “There are the stars of my night.”

“Ew,” Jack interjected from behind him, even though neither could hear.

“My ray of morning sun,” the woman responded, her smile no less affected. “I miss you.”

“I miss you too, Ahava,” said Kozmotis. That name - he’d spoken it in another memory, when he’d brought Nightlight home to meet Rashena. It was clear to see, now that Jack thought of Rashena, exactly how her mother’s features had softened her father’s harsh ones in their little girl’s face.

So Ahava was Pitch Black’s _wife_. “Still ew.”

“How long since we were even on the same ship?”

“So long I’m beginning to forget what warmth is,” Ahava crooned, her voice touched with real longing.

“This is the worst part of the whole maze,” Jack interjected, his face twisting as he gagged. He considered plugging his ears and humming his way through the rest of this memory. “Worse than the giant spiders.”

“I don’t suppose you’re watching this message somewhere private?” Kozmotis asked with the barest edge of hope in his voice.

“Oh, please no,” Jack said despondently, hoping desperately that this part of the maze would let him go if this got anymore intense. Ew ew ew.

“I’m afraid not.”

“Thank you, sweet spirit of mercy.”

“Well then I look forward more than ever to our upcoming shore leave,” Kozmotis said. “How’s the mission going? That commander still giving you hell?”

“He’s finally gotten off my back. I had to prove him wrong about the gravitational flux of the binary system first, which, by the way, took a very detailed presentation and the entire crew attended.”

Kozmotis laughed at this, a laugh so deep and hearty - and delighted - that Jack was surprised he was even capable of feeling that kind of joy.

“Let me get this straight, after all that, the months of doubting your calculations and trying to undermine your work, you took him to school in front of the captain and the entire crew. Via slideshow.”

Ahava just grinned. “You would not believe the proofs I laid out. I haven’t shown my work this much since school. By the end of it, he looked as if he’d chew off his own leg to escape.”  

“That’s my girl.”

“And what about you, Mister Promotion?”

Koz looked surprised and then somewhat disappointed. “What ruined the surprise? I’ve been dying to tell you all week.”

“I do keep an eye out for the military news.”

“I did get promoted, yes. Captain now,” he said, preening slightly. 

“Ooh la la! Captain Kozmotis Pitchiner, there’s a name,” Ahava purred, cradling her chin in her hands. “He certainly sounds like a man whose wife owns small, silky things that may or may not get stuck in his teeth.”

Jack promptly curled up on the floor in abject misery with his hands over his ears, and loudly sang several verses of The Bird Song, fervently wishing that he was not listening to any of this. When he, suspiciously, pulled a hand away from his ear, the two of them seemed to have left that horrifying visual far behind in favor of…

“She called me a poophead,” Kozmotis said miserably, which changed to an expression of mild reproach when his wife made a noise that sounded more like laughter than sympathy.

“She has keen observational skills, if not the most impressive vocabulary,” Ahava answered. “Oh don’t make that face, I’m only teasing! Why are you a poophead today, dear heart?”

“I told her I couldn’t come home until I had shore leave,” Kozmotis said. This time Ahava’s face did take a turn for the sympathetic.

“She misses you,” she said softly. “It’s hard for all of us -- hard for you to be out there without us, and hard for us to be where we are without you.”

“But she should know how important it is that I be out here - for you _and_ for her. She should know that eventually, I’ll always make it home -”

“Darling, she’s a little girl,” Ahava pointed out. “Everything is still new to her. She’s too busy _experiencing_ things to _know_.”

Koz rested his chin on his hand, a rare informal stance. “Now how does a mathematician know the poetry of child psychology?”

“I read more than military news,” Ahava chuckled. “Enjoy our little flower while we have her, honey. She’s not going to be a little girl forever.”

“I know, that’s what I told her.”

“ _Do_ you know?” Ahava asked, raising her silver eyebrows. Koz’s serious expression suggested that he hadn’t really thought about it - not deeply - but now he was.

“You think I’m too stiff with her at times, don’t you?”

“You can be a bit dour, you know. And she’s a child. You are out there protecting children like her, yes, but you’re not just protecting their lives, you’re protecting them from having to live in fear. You’re making it so they can spend their time as children feeling joy. You all may be soldiers, but you’re guardians of much more than their lives. A little more silliness and a little less austereness now and again wouldn’t be remiss. ”

Jack’s brows furrowed as he listened to her speak and then he looked over at Pitch’s face to see what his reaction would be to that.

It turned out to be a sigh and grudging acknowledgement. “You do have a point. I suppose there are ways I can make it clear I have my responsibilities that are a little less...stern.”

Jack could only stare at Kozmotis’ face, full of love and concession - the face of a man who could compromise, who had empathy. Who loved a child, and protected her chance to have a childhood.

“What happened to you?” Jack asked, softly. If there was a point to these memories, now he wanted to know it.

Then just like that, the moment before him was gone and he was suddenly in the middle of a battlefield. Soldiers were fighting viciously around him and what they fought against was like nothing he’d ever seen. The creatures they were slashing at with their swords were monstrous, their bodies an inky black, limbs stretched out and grossly disproportionate. They slashed at the soldiers with massive claws and bit them with razor sharp teeth, and their chittering, childlike laughter and screeches were something that was going to haunt Jack’s nightmares.

He weaved and ducked through the battle instinctually, even though he knew that nothing in it could touch him. That led to him almost running through Kozmotis who was leading a squad of men as they cut the things down. Jack saw a sword gleaming in his hand and as it raised into the air on an upstroke, he realized it was the same sword he’d picked up and had heard whispering to him in the room where he’d found Rashena’s music box.

“Left flank, forward march!” he cried out.

The beings they were fighting were getting beaten rather soundly, but the soldiers were still taking casualties. Jack scurried away in horror as a soldier fell down dead in front of him, his throat slashed open.

Yet there was Kozmotis, leading his men forward into the fray, utterly fearless as he fought the horrible creatures. Jack couldn’t help admire it, which was a very strange feeling to have to wrestle with. A guardian indeed. Ahava had been right about that. All of these soldiers were guardians of a sort. 

Up in the sky, ships circled and it looked as if they were blasting at the beings with light up in the atmosphere or sucking them into massive traps. Before long, the last of the creatures were retreating, only to be annihilated or captured as they tried to escape and as soon as the last of them fell, the soldiers let out a cheer.

“Quickly, we have to tend to the survivors. Last sweeps and then open the shelters, have the medics at the ready. It looks like several ships are docked at the colony right now and -”

Kozmotis trailed off as he looked over at the docking port and finally saw the name of one of the ships there, his face going a pale tone that Jack was much more familiar with.  

“Lieutenant Breen, I need you to take over command,” he said distantly.

“Sir?” Breen asked next to him.

“I may be...compromised. I need you to take over command,” Kozmotis said. Jem turned and looked at the spaceport.

“Oh, stars,” he said breathlessly when he saw the ship, the name ‘Aurora’ emblazoned on the side.

“Sir?” questioned another officer as he saw their captain standing there in shock.

“That’s his wife’s research vessel. They must have stopped to try to help the colonists -” Breen explained but Kozmotis didn’t stay to listen. He broke rank and started canvassing the area, looking at the bodies laying on the ground. Jack ran after him, not even needing the pull of the invisible tether, a pit of horror cracking open in his stomach.

 Kozmotis had said something about not being able to protect his wife in later memories, had spoken of her like she hadn’t been there anymore, like she’d been -

“ _NO!_ ” the cry was plaintive and horrified and Kozmotis surged forward, dropping to knees next to the entrance of some kind of shelter, where other soldiers were releasing the people hiding inside.

Right next to the entrance was a body, laying ragged and bloodied on the ground.

And there she was, her once bright eyes open and staring at nothing, her body carved up by countless cuts and gashes, some kind of blaster still held loosely in her hand. Her blood had made mud of the torn dirt around her.

Kozmotis gathered her up into his arms, letting out a wrenching cry that tore into Jack’s heart with hooks. Even though this was his enemy, this pain was real, this grief was sincere and it wasn’t any less so because this man, Kozmotis Pitchiner, had somehow eventually been destroyed to make way for the nightmare known as Pitch Black.

Kozmotis wept uncontrollably as he held her, as the other soldiers and refugees could only look on in pity. Eventually, after what seemed like ages, when the flash flood of his grief had subsided to the low flow of floodwaters over the barricades, a young woman that had come out of the shelter stepped forward and knelt next to him.

“She saved us,” the girl said quietly. “She held them at the entrance so we could all get in and when they grabbed her, she kicked the button to seal the door so they couldn’t come after us. I just - I just thought you should know. I’m so, so sorry.”

The world shifted away from the tear-stained face of a man facing down the worst agony he’d known in his life and shifted to a scene in the foyer of Pitch’s house. His face was blank now and lined with wrinkles that hadn’t been there before. He was kneeling in front of his daughter, tears trickling down his face, hands on her shoulders as tears poured down hers.

“I’m so sorry.”

“I want mommy! Where’s mommy?! I want mommy!”  

“I’m so sorry, darling. I’m sorry.”

“I want moooommy,” the girl sobbed. “I want moooommmy.”

They wept together, clinging to each other, and seeing the little girl’s pain caused tears to brim in Jack’s eyes. If he was honest with himself, seeing Kozmotis’ pain was causing it, too. 

Had this been the start? Had it started something that later propelled Kozmotis into being Pitch? But if it had, wouldn’t he have been less compassionate later, when he’d taken in Nightlight? If this had started it all, would he have still been out there fighting, trying to protect people from the things that were hiding in the dark?

The memory faded away and Jack was left alone in the maze to stare at the stone walls surrounding him. The skates flew up next to him and he looked up at them and then shook his head in confusion.

“How? How could someone like that -” Someone who loved others and fought for people’s lives and the innocence of children, someone that fought to put an _end_ to fear… “- have turned into _Pitch_?”

Why was the maze showing him this? What did it all _mean_?

* * *

The children had been left with Sandy and the sleigh quite some distance away. They were a boon in a fight against Pitch and nearly untouchable by the Bogeyman because of their lack of fear when dealing with him, but the Guardians were already anxious about having brought children along with them. There was no way they were letting them get remotely near Krampus, even despite the fact that he’d taken the Enkidu Oath decades before.

North still wanted to kill him. He was not, by his nature, a particularly murderous man. Even back in his days of being a thief and vagabond, he had not killed unless he’d had to for the sake of his own survival. But the existence of the goat-man had always chafed at him and it had always taken a great deal of willpower to keep himself from solving his problems with the other spirit permanently.

“You gonna be calm about this, mate?” Bunny asked, pausing again to sniff the wind and make sure they were still on the scent. North grunted. “Because we can swap you out for Sandy otherwise.”

“I am calm,” North answered. After all those years of making his holiday one of wonder and joy, of happiness and togetherness and delight, Krampus had come along and tried to drag himself out of the shadow of disbelief by latching onto Christmas like a parasite. North had sympathy enough for the myths who the times left behind. There were myths who had died, and the world had lost their names, and others whose names had simply slipped out of human memory, who’d faded with them. It was a sorrow, and for many, a deep terror - one the Guardians had been sobered to remember not so long ago.

But Krampus had chosen pain and fear as his way of gaining a new foothold in the world, and had caused an association between such things and Christmas, no less.

It was only the fact that Pitch could have taken over Krampus’s bogeymannish role that had stayed North’s hand when he’d faced the monstrous being last, around the turn of the 20th century. Pitch had long since been defeated but North had always been the most vigilant of the Guardians when it came to Pitch and he’d not wanted to leave a power vacuum that the Nightmare King would have filled all too eagerly.

So it had been the Enkidu Oath for Krampus, a vow to never again harm another child - or anyone else, for that matter. And he had languished in the dark, becoming just a scary tale told to children on Krampusnacht, one that vanished in the light of morning when they raced down to their gifts the next day. Before long, the fearsome creature had become a furry cherub on holiday cards, and children feared him more like they might fear the exhilarating drop of a roller coaster than something they felt would come for them in the dark.  

Still, even though he had fallen, while North preferred that myths choose to stop causing harm rather than force the hands of the Guardians, it was one of the only times North had regretted offering the Oath to a defeated enemy.

North stared at the abandoned building that lay before them.

“There will be traps,” he said to Bunny, Tooth, and Anansi. “He has always had a gift with machines and devices like I have.”

It had been in imitation of North, born of his desire supplant him. If Krampus had gotten his way, there would have still been a Christmas, one in which the good children still got their toys, but the naughty would have been punished by a fate far worse than receiving coal. 

“We must not let him get away,” North told the others. “This could be our only chance to find Jack.”

Next to him, he saw Tooth’s feather flare out in a sign of aggression, holding out her hands as if her nails were talons. Bunny was holding his boomerangs in a way that suggested he was planning on seeing how easily they might break Krampus’s head. Anansi’s armored exoskeleton suddenly appeared over his skin as he brought himself up on his spider’s legs.

The sight of it suddenly made North laugh.

“What am I saying? Of course he will not get away.” 

With that Bunny opened a hole in the Earth and after a quick slide through his tunnels they suddenly appeared inside the building.

It was very, very old and nearly falling apart. If not for the magical influence of Krampus, it probably would have fallen apart many, many years before. As they moved cautiously past abandoned bedrooms and a long hall that may have served as a dining area, it became clear that once upon a time, very long ago, this had possibly been an orphanage.

It was still decorated for a Christmas that had long since past, shriveled wreaths hanging on doors, dead garlands threaded around the railing of the stairwell. In one room, broken ornaments gray with a coating of dust hung on the skeleton of a long-dead Christmas tree.

“I smell blood,” Bunny said, sniffing. “Old, though. Very, _very_ old.” 

North gritted his teeth. “It must have been not long before I defeated him and made him take the oath. Pah, some days I still wonder why I gave him the choice at all.”

“Beating him shapeless again should make you feel better,” Bunny pointed out.   

The sudden sound of a tensing wire caught their attention. Bunny’s ears whipped to the left, and the others’ eyes followed. “Anansi! Look ou-”

But the warning came too late. A wire snapped against Anansi’s chitinous black-shelled leg, and the ceiling above him opened up, showering him with a flood of spiders. Anansi’s shriek flooded the hall.

“OH MY ME! THEY’RE SO CUTE!”

His eyes glittered as he cupped his hands, hairy brown bodies spilling over his fingers. “Look at you! Look at all your shining little eyes, you hairy little jewels!” he scritched at one with a careful finger as the spider, along with most of the others, bit him. “Your venom is so POTENT! Your mother must be so proud!”

As one, the rest of the Guardians took several steps away from the spider-coated Spider, still cooing over the trap he’d tripped.

As they moved forward, a net shot out from a wall and was immediately shredded to bits by Tooth’s razor sharp wings. She rolled her eyes.

“This is pretty pitiful,” she said, looking unimpressed. 

Something else fwapinged as they started moving up the stairs and a massive ball covered in spikes started rolling down the stairs. Now it was Bunny’s turn to roll his eyes, as he tapped his foot and the ball disappeared into one of his tunnels.

“Too right. How was this clown ever a threat?” he asked.

“Do not underestimate him,” said North. “This is merely distraction.”

They kept moving. Up on the second floor, a trap door opened under Anansi, one he easily traversed with his massive spider’s legs.

“Don’t look, little ones, that seems like a very scary drop,” he cooed to the little spiders.

Some strange kind of clockwork machine, swords clasped in its hands, exited from a room, and North casually sliced it to bits. Ahead of them was a room that had the doors locked and bolted - and magically warded.

“This looks like it will take some time to get through,” North said, which was why instead of trying to get through it, he looked out the nearest window, only to see a brown-furred figure running towards the treeline down below.

Bunny crowded in at the window. “Looks like he’s done a runner.”

“I told you, do not underestimate him. He meant to keep us distracted getting into room, thinking him there, while he escaped,” North said, jumping out the window. Bunny and Anansi followed, and Tooth zipped out and flew ahead of them. Faster than even Bunny could catch up to Krampus, she tackled him to the ground near the treeline. Initially he tried to fight back and claw at her, but she punched him until he stopped struggling. Then she hovered over him as the others caught up, teeth bared, head crest flaring, letting out a strange hissing sound the other Guardians had only ever heard her make a rare few times in their time fighting at her side.

The rest of the Guardians caught up and looked down on him, sitting there pitiful and bloodied in the snow, one of his jagged horns broken by the Tooth Fariy’s barrage.

“You are going to tell us what we want to know,” North said, pointing one of his sabers at the snaggle-toothed creature. “Or you will die.”

Krampus sat up in the grass and laughed. “You’re not going to kill me, North, or you’d have done it ages ago.”

“You have some value alive, yes. But perhaps you have more value to me without limbs?” North’s blade plunged down into the meat of Krampus’ shoulder, pinning the half-goat monster down into the ground, then planted a heavy boot in Krampus’ mouth when he opened it to scream. “Hush. There are children not far from here, they do not need to hear screaming.” He twisted his blade, just a little. “Screaming is distressing.”

He crouched down, keeping his boot in Krampus’ mouth and his saber in his shoulder. “I am very fond of Jack Frost, you know,” he said, and it almost sounded conversational, if a conversation sounded like a sharp knife wrapped in silk. “He is endearing, and he opens eyes and brings joy, and he is a child. I can tell by the shape of your chest that your body remembers what happened the last time I found you harming children, even if your mind has somehow forgotten.”

He shifted his weight, tapping a strangely concave spot on Krampus’ chest with the tip of his other sword, and the creature made a strangled gagging noise. “Ah, you do remember? Wonderful.”

North went on, “I like to think of myself as a good man, with morals. But there is very, very little I would not do to protect a child. You do not want to test those limits, Krampus. Not when they are so strained in regard to you as they are already.”

He sheathed the saber not in Krampus’ shoulder, and yanked the other free as well before extracting his tooth-scored boot from the creature’s mouth. He stooped and lifted the goat-man out of the snow by a handful of the thick fur covering his throat.

“Unlike you, who only imitate,” he said, so softly that the other three Guardians could barely hear him, “I am a creative man. I would suggest you tell us who you built that trap for and where we can find them before I turn that creativity on you. If you do not, well…” His next words were a whisper in Krampus’ ear alone, whisked away from the other three by the wind.

“Alright!” Krampus protested in a strangled voice. “I’ll talk, I’ll talk!”

“Quickly,” North said sharply.

“I made the puzzle box for Pitch,” Krampus growled, beady red eyes narrowed as he started hatefully at the Guardian. “I didn’t know which of you he was going to use it on or what he was going to use it for. All he wanted was something he could use to bring a Guardian the places he wanted to bring them. I asked if he’d harm them and he said no.” Very conveniently, so that Krampus’ oath hadn’t kicked in. “So I was free to deliver as asked - after all, how was I to know he didn’t just want to have a little chat, no?”

“Where?” North said, slamming the goat-man into a nearby tree. “Where did it take him in the end? Where would he be now?”

“Camelot. Pitch found Camelot and he wanted it to be the last place it led to. There’s an entrance under the London subway. Notting Hill Gate. It leads to the crossroads that goes to where Merlin hid Camelot before he disappeared. I don’t know what he wanted with the boy.” His crooked teeth were bared in a grin. “But I sure hope it was something terrible.”   

North snorted with disgust and dropped Krampus in a heap before turning to the other three. “There is no time to waste. Back to the sleigh, then to Camelot.”

“What did you say to that yobbo?” Bunny asked as he turned to lope back toward the sleigh. North shrugged.

“I tell him that I will bargain to leave him on the Small Planet ride,” he said. “For what feels like lifetimes.”

Anansi whistled, sounding impressed. “Making deals with Baba Yaga and the Mouse in one day? That’s a mark of a brave man if I ever heard one.”

Behind them, laughter started, like the slow slide of the face of a mountain at the beginning of an avalanche and then it rumbled behind them as Krampus cut loose. The Guardians all turned to face him and he just grinned a bloody grin at them as he brayed his goat-like laugh.

“You really think it’s that easy, don’t you, you old blowhard,” Krampus said to North. “That you’re going to just whisk off to save him, no harm done.”

The laughter stopped but the malicious expression on Krampus’s face didn’t hold any less glee.

“No matter what it takes,” said North. “We will find him.”

“I don’t doubt you will,” the goat-man’s lips curled into an even bigger smile. “But there’s no way you’ll find him soon enough to save him, not if I’m right about where Pitch sent him. But that was always your greatest weakness, wasn’t it, North? Always so self-assured, even when it wasn’t warranted.”

North cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean by this? What has been done to Jack?”

“Oh, you’ll see. Some things are better left as a surprise, aren’t they, North? And there are even more surprises left to come, you know. I’m not the only one that despises the Guardians and we’re all a little tired of hiding in the dark. Luckily, we’ve met a new friend that wants to help us come out and play - and when that happens, everything you believe in, everything you stand for will crumble into _dust_.”

North started marching back towards the other spirit but he simply waved a hand, as a light suddenly appeared around him, and there was a noise like the universe tearing. Pulled out of the place where it was hidden in his matted fur, a little device was whirring in his hand.

“After all, when it comes down to it...who guards the Guardians?”

Krampus disappeared right before North reached him again.

“Bah!” North said loudly, turning away again. “Next time, he would be more useful with less arms!”

Bunny and Anansi continued back toward the sleigh, but Tooth hovered in place until North caught up. She patted the other myth on the shoulder.

“More limbs than I’d leave him with,” she said. North made a noise like a laugh and she smiled at him. “You’re a good man, Nicholas St. North.”

North paused for a moment. “‘Good’, perhaps,” he said slowly. “ ‘Nice’...”

It took him a moment, but he found the words. “Nice is not part of job description.”

Tooth nodded sharply, and the two of them moved to catch up with the others.

“Anansi, only one spider in sleigh at a time!”

“But it’s too cold here for these precious creatures!”

* * *

The next room of lights was walled in splintered wood, and the lights hovered with greater space between them.

“All right, I get it, no more pretty lights for me,” Jack grumbled. “Eventually.”

The rooms were still huge, the lights still floating in lovely, heart-warming masses. At the rate they diminished, Jack could expect to wander for years through the maze and still have light in his life.

And the Guardians would _certainly_ find him before years had passed. Jack strode through the lights at a defiant pace, admiring them like a tourist on a casual stroll, not a prisoner clinging to his last comforts.

The door slammed behind him, and the smell of rot slammed into Jack’s senses.

He gagged on nothing, his empty stomach twisting at the wet stench and the feel of chilly mud beneath his bare feet. His eyes adjusted to the dimness of the unlit room and he backed against the door, waiting to see the body that was rotting into the smell.

It wasn’t a room and there wasn’t a body. It was a field, and there were hundreds of bodies. Hundreds of dead rabbits, some encased in ice, some half-frozen and decomposing in the still air. A few of the dead rabbits stared at him with too-human eyes locked open by the ice.

Jack’s stomach twisted again and he leaned against the door for support.

He saw another door at the far side of the field and bolted for it. The melting ice had pooled on the dirt and grass in a muddy, cold slick, and he struggled not to slip - and not to step on any bodies as he went.

It had to be an illusion. It had to be - Anansi had been very clear when he’d told Jack the story of what had happened to the pookas, and Bunny had confirmed it. He’d buried them in the warren himself. From them had grown flowers, and trees, and the light and life had come back to that place in time. This was no more than a horrific reconstruction. These were not actually the bodies of his friend’s long-dead family that he was narrowly avoiding stepping on.

Yet even running through the memory felt like a desecration.

Jack reached the door opposite the field and threw himself through it, pulling it shut behind him. He leaned against the wall, breathing in the stale, but scentless, air.

The maze was built on fear. Jack had experienced his own fears and had stumbled onto Pitch’s, who he knew was there in the maze - or had been, at one point.

Anansi had traumatized Jack with the story of the aftermath of Old Man Winter’s attack on the Bunny’s home, but the field of frozen pookas wasn’t _his_ fear. Perhaps that meant the Guardians had found the maze but gotten caught in it themselves, and were looking for him. For a moment, that thought lifted his spirits, but then he nearly heaved his empty stomach as he thought of Bunny stumbling, unwary, onto that frozen field.

If the others were lost in the maze, he had to hope they would find him - that they would all find each other - soon. They could face their fears together, if not without being hurt by them, at least better than they could alone.

The Guardians would save him soon, he thought, as he came upon another crossroads and bit his finger to mark the wall with another number in blood.

They’d find him before he saw anything so awful that he couldn’t forget it, before anything in here scarred him for life.

They’d find him.

They would.

They’d find him.

That was when the unending litany started, going on in the back of his head, the background noise of his new existence:

_Please find me. Please find me. Please find me. Please find me. Please find me..._


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the wait. The upside is the chapter got so long we split it into two. The next one - which is a big'un - will be posted on November 1st. Expect big things. Big, possibly horrible things. For both Jack and Kozmotis. 
> 
> We'd also like to let our readers know that we've been fortunate enough to have a fantastic fanartist join in with us. Seekingskywhales made some art for this chapter and for one of the previous ones (the Sandy vs. Pitch bit) and will occasionally be tossing us some illustrations to post with our chapters when she has the time. If you like her fanart, check out her tumblr via the link, she has a lot of great original art and ROTG fanart.

Jack couldn’t go forever without sleep. Myths could go sleepless for a very long time, but it was like a small part of them still ached for a bit of mortality, and what was more mortal than having to sleep? The stress of the maze, occasional injuries, and long stretches of solitude made it even harder to stay awake without a good rest. Occasionally, Jack felt sleep overcome him.

There was no truly safe place to sleep in the maze, but the rooms of lights had never held any dangers, no matter how many times he passed through them. So it was in one of those rooms - this one with even fewer lights than before - that Jack settled on for a nap, telling his skate buddies to keep watch and nudge him if something happened.

His dreams took him down endless corridors, with voices calling out to him from empty spaces.

They were frightening, but one loud voice spoke words that seemed meant to reassure him.

**_it will end…_**

**_it will end..._**

It gave him hope that even the maze had an end. But it might not have been meant to be hopeful. Maybe it meant that his life would end.

Maybe it would end sooner than he thought. A tickle at Jack’s neck woke him, just before he felt his air cut off. Something was choking him. His eyes shot open and his hands flew to the hands currently wrapped around his neck. No one stood above him, no body pressed him down, but those fingers dug into his neck, resisting his attempts to pry them off.

“ _Grck_!”

Wheezing, Jack pried the fingers away, thrusting the hands away. They landed on the floor, a bloodshot eye blinking in each palm.

It was that grotesque hand creature! The one from that strange room of boxes with the music box and Kozmotis’ sword.

It skittered towards Jack’s leg. He jumped back a few steps as if the floor under his feet was on fire and kicked it as hard as he could. It flew and slammed into the stone wall so hard that blood smeared the wall as it fell down. It skittered away when it landed, still trailing blood.

Jack staggered deeper into the maze, putting distance between himself and the hand. He collapsed against the wall and slid down it, breathless.

He finally caught his breath after a few moments of wheezing.

He looked up at his skate friends. “Why didn’t you guys wake me up?” he croaked, his hoarse voice betraying his hurt. He rubbed at his neck. “That thing could’ve killed me! Why didn’t you warn me?”

The skates simply hovered there for a moment, tilted as if they were staring down at him. Then they did a sudden joyful pirouette and skated away.

“Hey! Where are you going?”

They disappeared around a corner. Jack ran after them.

“Huey, Louie, I’m not _that_ mad! It’s okay, I know you didn’t mean to - hey, guys, come back!”

He was losing them now, as they picked up speed and disappeared around another corner. Jack’s eyes welled up with tears.

“Guys, come back! I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell.”

He skidded around another corner and saw them. They’d gotten far, far ahead of him.

“Please don’t leave!” he cried out. He ran as fast as he could, but he was still winded from being strangled and couldn’t keep up. “Please!”

They zipped around another corner and when Jack ran around it, he saw a junction where multiple hallways met. Five of them, to be exact, and no sign of the skates. There was no way he’d be able to find them now.  

Jack dropped to his knees, eyes still brimming with tears at the thought of facing the maze alone, something in his chest twisting painfully.

The feeling was a familiar one. One that, once upon a time, he’d hoped he’d never have to know again. Now it was the only thing he knew. Apparently, what the maze gaveth, it taketh away.

Maybe the taking was why he’d been given it at all.

* * *

 

When Nightlight appeared again, Jack followed him, subdued. The next vision left him floating in space again, overlooking a planet that sparkled as if it were made of diamond, and a ship descending towards it. Kozmotis’ ship. But the sight that took up his attention was the swath of - Jack wasn’t sure what to call it. It hung across the blackness of space, a colorless nothing that lead to and away from the planet - some horrible trail cut into space itself.

The ship landed and Jack landed with it, finding himself once again on the world Nightlight had come from. It looked hardly different from the last time he saw it, but he quickly understood why when the soldiers all deployed from the ship. This must have taken place shortly before the other memories he’d seen. He spotted Kozmotis leading his men and followed. Their search took him through a village.

The village was a crystalline sort of organic, with twisty, black-barked trees growing in orderly rows between buildings grown from crystal. Some of it had been hewn aside to make smooth walls, but others had allowed the crystal to grow in its natural spires. Unlike earth crystal, these spires twisted like the trees in smooth, molten loops. Light bent through the curved stones, shining on the ground like water pouring from a fountain, pooling in decorative patterns on the sandy black soil.

“Fan out,” said Kozmotis.

“Sir! Over here, sir!”

The soldier moved into an area that looked like it might have been some kind of meeting hall. The moment Jack moved into the room to take a look, he regretted it.

Bodies lay in a massive circle in the center of the room. The dead looked like Nightlight, their skin in various shades of white and cream and pale gold. There were men and women and even the elderly - and and every one of them a weapon in their hands, or one near enough to have fallen from them. Every one was cut open, their gashes still flowing with blood, the ground soaked where they lay.

Jack gagged twice before getting his stomach under control.

In the center of the circle was an empty space, where various handmade dolls and toys had been discarded. Kozmotis stepped over the bodies into the center of the circle and picked up a wooden doll, one not so different from the doll North had made for Jack. Jack’s hand instinctively went to the doll, still in his pocket.    

“They must have fought to the last man and woman to protect their children,” Kozmotis said ruefully, placing the doll down again out of respect. He stepped away from the pile and back to his men. “We have to look for survivors.”

Jack followed the soldiers as they searched. They didn’t find any.  

At least not until they found a cave outside the village.

“Sir, the lighting in here -” said one of the soldiers. “It might have been strong enough to keep the fearlings out.”

The cave had crystals like in the village but where they seemed to capture light, these emitted it on their own. It was nearly as bright as day in the cave. The crystals that did not emit light of their own caught and split the light from the others so that the interior of the cave was dappled with light of every color.

A soldier inside the cave called out. “Over here! I think I found a survivor!”

Kozmotis hurried in after him. “Where?”

“In here, sir, they’re - whoa!” The soldier jumped away just before a familiar crystal-tipped spear thrust out of a hole in the wall, a hidden nook in the cave. If he hadn’t jumped out of the way in time, the soldier would have been speared in the thigh.  

“Everyone back away. They’re probably in a panic.”

Jack winced, remembering that Nightlight had been the only one to survive the attack on his village. Was this that memory, or the memory of some other Star Herder village that had been even less lucky?

Kozmotis stood next to the hole and spoke quietly to whoever it was inside.

“I’m Captain Kozmotis Pitchiner, of the 5th regiment of the Golden Army. We mean you no harm.”  

The Star Herder didn’t want to leave the hiding spot apparently. Kozmotis sighed.

“We want to help you. We have food. We can provide medical care for any injuries you might have. We need you to come out and put down your weapon.”

Still the Star Herder hid.

“We can’t help you unless you come out.”

Apparently, the Star Herder didn’t want to be helped.

Kozmotis sighed and resheathed his sword.

“Sir, what are you doing?”

“Something mad,” he said calmly, kneeling down in front of the hole. The spear immediately shot out at his head and he calmly knocked it aside, grabbing onto it and _yanking_. It wasn’t enough to pull the Star Herder out of the hole, but it was enough for Koz to yank the spear away and bring the wielder within reach.

There was a kicking, biting, vicious struggled as Kozmotis dragged Nightlight out and held him close, even as he fought to get free. The boy looked much more of a mess than he had in the later vision. He was injured and covered in dirt and his face was streaked with tears, as if he’d been crying for days.

Jack could sympathize.

Other soldiers moved forward to help, but Kozmotis snapped out, “Stay back. You’ll only - mmf - frighten him even more.”

“He’s hardly more than a child,” murmured a soldier behind the two.  And she was right -- Nightlight looked younger than Jack had been when he died, and looked younger still in Kozmotis’ arms.

Nightlight fought against Kozmotis’ grip, but the soldier held on tight, rocking him in place, hushing him gently.

“Sssh. It’s alright. You’re safe now. We’re not going to hurt you. We’re not going to hurt you, child. You’re safe.”

The boy, finally realizing that these were not fearlings trying to deceive him, started to calm. He began to shake uncontrollably in Kozmotis’ arms.

“It’s all over. We won’t let the fearlings hurt you anymore.”

The shaking was not just shaking now. Nightlight wept despondently, his mewling cries like the tinkling of stars dying and crumbling away into nothing. It made Jack’s heart ache just to hear it. He slipped through the crowd toward the man and boy, almost without thinking about it. Nightlight was a child in pain, and Jack was a Guardian -- that was what drove him forward, to reach out even though this pain was so very, very old.

Jack touched Nightlight’s shoulder, and the vision burst like a soap bubble.

* * *

 

It was as impossible as ever to track time in the maze, but it had to be at least another two days before Jack came to another room of colored lights. He was about to settle down and snatch some rest when a movement caught his eye. Something was already resting in the room.

Jack reached for the staff that wasn’t there on instinct, ready to attack before he even got a good look at the little bundle of tattered cloth leaning against the far wall. A child.

Not just any child.

“Jamie?”

Jack’s heart lifted at the sight of the boy, then dropped as Jamie lifted his head and Jack saw the expression on his face, the dark circles under his eyes, realized there was blood seeping from the tatters in Jamie’s t-shirt.

“Jack!”

Jamie’s cry was nearly a sob. He threw himself at Jack, nearly bowling him over with his embrace. Jack dropped down to put his arms around Jamie as the boy buried his face in Jack’s chest, shaking, barely restraining himself from crying. Brave little Jamie, who had the heart of a lion - but there were things in this place that would make even a lion tremble.

Jack couldn’t even tell him it was going to be okay. Not without lying. “How did you get here?” he asked instead, kneeling down so he could look Jamie in the eye.

Jamie pulled back, hollow-eyed and streaming with tears.

“We were trying to find you and the trail led here. They brought me and Cupcake to help against the nightmares.”

“Where are the others?” Jack asked. “Did they tell you to wait here?”

Jamie shook his head. “We - followed you to Camelot, but the Nightmares attacked and they forced me onto the Siege, and it took me here. I waited as long as I could, but these things came and chased me -” he trembled, gripping Jack’s hoodie like a lifeline. “I haven’t seen the Guardians since.”

Jack was so furious he could feel his heartbeat pulsing in his ears.

Why had the others brought Jamie and Cupcake? How could they risk their lives like that? He wasn’t worth this. If this was the price paid for trying to rescue him, they should have left him.

“Jack -” Jamie said, in a quiet, frightened voice. “It’s been days. I’m so hungry. There was water and I guess it was safe because I haven’t gotten sick from it, but there hasn’t been any food.”

“We’ll - we’ll figure something out. We’ll -”

But he couldn’t promise that. He couldn’t promise that they’d find a way out, that the Guardians would find them in time.

“They’re looking for us, Jamie.” That much, he could be sure of. “The Guardians are looking for us, okay? We just - we just have to hold out long enough for them to find us. There are animals here and sometimes things we could use to make a fire. I don’t know if they’re safe but I could try to eat first to make sure, because if something makes me sick, we’d know it could kill you. We just have to - we just have to hold out for a while, okay? Because they’re looking for us. They won’t leave us in here. They know where we are now and they’ll get us out.”

Jamie finally released Jack’s hoodie, smearing tears from his face with both hands.

“Okay,” he said, nodding, choking back the fear. “You’re right. They wouldn’t leave us like this.”

The smile on Jamie’s face, wavery and fragile as it was, made it easier for Jack to smile, too.

“Now all we have to do,” he said, standing up, reaching a hand out to Jamie to help him up “- is to stay together -”

It was as if the maze had been waiting for him to say it. Without even a crack of warning, the floor beneath Jamie split and fell away, and so did the boy - his screaming fit to freeze Jack’s heart.

“NO!”

Jack threw himself into the hole, and landed hard as the floor reformed just in time for him to crash into it. He felt his shoulder pop and yelled again, in pain as much as in horror.

He rolled over, beating the floor with both fists, oblivious to the pain in his shoulder.

“JAMIE!”

The floor stayed solid beneath him. He pounded, and screamed, and jumped, but it refused to give. When he stopped yelling and pressed his ear to the stone, he heard the faintest sounds coming through - sounds that might have been screaming.

Jack stood up and charged out of the room, hoping that he’d come to a place soon with something he could use to break through the floor - but instead, he ran straight into another vision.

“NO!” he screamed, but there was no help for it - he floated in midair, intangible, unable to even touch his feet to the floor as Nightlight and Rashena ran through what looked like a large living room, the ornate furniture pushed back and covered with sheets in an elaborate blanket fort.

Rashena’s shrieks of joy only put him in mind of Jamie’s scream of terror. Jack thrashed against the memory, shouting over the words Kozmotis was speaking to his second in the corner.

“Let me out!  LET ME OUT! I DON’T CARE ABOUT PITCH’S STUPID PAST! I DON’T CARE!”

The maze was as unyielding as ever. The memory carried on.

Jack settled against the wall, sliding down it to sit with his knees drawn up, watching the memory play out through blurred eyes.

Nightlight and Rashena were running around the house in a manner that could only be described as “capering,” clearly engaged in some game of pretend. Nightlight’s role in it involved dancing in a silly way and wearing something like a colander on his head.

Kozmotis sat at the table nearby with Jem Breen. The former had a glass of wine, the latter was not so much nursing a beer as aggressively doctoring it.  

“Oh, for the love of Solus, are you chronically incapable of not being fancy?” Jem said, nodding towards Kozmotis’ wine, reading the bottle. “‘Sterling Saint Marigold tart cherry cranberry’? Really?”

“I am a slave to my nature,” said Koz, sipping from the wineglass with his pinkie extended. “And my nature has a palate.”

In the background, Jack had begun sobbing. The sight of Nightlight and Rashena capering, of Jem and Koz enjoying each others’ company, hadn’t stopped his tears.

Jamie was lost in the maze, hurting and afraid, and Jack was stuck here watching happiness that he knew had to end somehow, and horribly. In all his years of begging the moon for answers, he’d never felt so helpless.

Kozmotis and Jem sipped their drinks as Rashena and Nightlight collapsed their blanket fort by falling onto it. Kozmotis was watching them play with an expression that was almost sad.

“You know the Star Herders apparently put a weapon in the hands of their children as young as age twelve. We didn’t run into them because there were so many of us and our ships were making so much noise, but some of the creatures on their planet are incredibly dangerous. If the Star Herders went out alone, the beasts would stalk them. They teach every child to fight as soon as they’re old enough to hold a weapon,” said Kozmotis. “His people lived in peace but even so, their children had to grow up sooner than they’d have liked. I can’t pronounce it but they have a word for it that translates to ‘the great sorrow.’ ”

He went on, “They’re playing right now but he thinks he needs to protect her, as if he’s some kind of bodyguard. That’s how the older teens saw themselves apparently, in regards to the younger children. They were their shepherds, the guardians of their childhoods.”  

“Well, he doesn’t have to grow up too fast now, does he?”

“I suppose not. Nothing can make up for what he’s lost but maybe that’s something extra I can give him.”  

“Yeah? What are you planning?”

“Well, I already have the adoption papers. All that’s left is to -”

Koz and Jem went on chatting, but Jack was crying too hard to hear anymore. There was no reason he needed to see this. No more reason than that he needed to be chased by tentacle monsters, but at least the maze let him run from those. How could he sit and listen to happy people mildly discussing adoption when Jamie was starving to death, if something else wasn’t killing him first?

When the voices stopped, he wiped his eyes and stood, prepared to go, but Nightlight stood directly in front of him, close enough to run into.

Jack was still only a second before running. Nightlight flashed out of his way like a puff of smoke, which was fine. Jack didn’t care about getting to the vision of the boy. He had to get to the real boy who’d gotten lost in the maze because of him.

* * *

Jack ran for days. Sometimes he ran from things attracted by the motion. Mostly, he just ran in search of Jamie.

He didn’t even have time to skid to a stop when Nightlight stepped in front of him again. He skidded right through the boy and into another memory, as if Nightlight had been a portal he’d passed through.

“No! No, I don’t care!” Jack huffed out, wringing his hands together fitfully. “I don’t! Care!”

All that was going to happen was that he was going to watch a family fall apart - just like Jamie’s would if he didn’t get him out of the maze and they never saw him again.

Jack found himself outside on a balcony. Through the glass doors he saw people dancing in a large room.

It was a party, some kind of officers’ ball taking place in a massive ballroom of Kozmotis’ mansion. Officers milled around, some of them in normal formal dress, some of them in formal uniforms.

Kozmotis wasn’t in the room, though. He was there on the balcony, with Lal Jelias, having a private moment that Jack seemed to have been dropped into.

“You wanted to talk to me about something?” Kozmotis asked her, looking bewildered. “If it’s about your report, it was excellent. You needn’t worry about the rescue operation, since Sergeant Vector was the one technically in charge, it’s his responsibility to gather up the statistics on the refugees -”

“This isn’t really about work,” she said. There was a glint in her eye that suggested she was amused at his obliviousness.  

It was obvious what he was being oblivious over. Lal had taken steps to look absolutely gorgeous. Unlike the other officers, she’d opted for a beautiful dress in deep blue with silver threads running through it like rivers, instead of her formal uniform. She’d made herself up, but Jack noticed, she hadn’t taken steps to cover her scar. She wore it as brazenly as the dress.

Koz might not have figured out the reason behind the softness in her eyes but Jack did.

It made him want to vomit.

“I am _not_ watching some other poor lady make goo-goo eyes at Pitch when I could be finding Jamie. First of all, I know she’s just going to end up sad or dead or both, and second of all, ew!”,

He turned on his heel and tried to stomp away, but they stood before him no matter which way he turned.

“Pretty smart of you to torture me by turning this into the Pitch Dating Show,” Jack muttered, crossing his arms and growling under his breath. “This is definitely something I never wanted to see.”

“So, what exactly was it that you wanted to talk about?” Kozmotis asked, still nervous. “That you needed to do alone.”  

“No point in drawing this out longer than necessary,” Lal said straightening her shoulders and standing like a woman defiant before a firing squad. “I was hoping that you might be amenable to a couple after-party drinks, Kozmotis, or - some other form of after-party.”

Kozmotis didn’t seem to have words for that, just a very quizzical sounding noise.

Eventually he found them. “You mean, ah, with you and Jem, yes?”

Lal couldn’t quite seem to suppress a smirk. “I am reasonably sure that Trixxi would object to Jem tagging along on the plans I had in mind, though I admit I haven’t consulted her on the matter. But I see I’ve aimed too high,” she continued, waving one hand and reaching out to take one of Kozmotis’. “I’ll speak more plainly: my suggested after-party is not platonic.”

“Ah,” he said quietly, looking at a loss for words.

“Ughhhh,” Jack groaned, throwing his hands up in the air. Could they just get through this stupid memory so he could go back to finding Jamie?

“I’m not professing my undying romantic love for you or anything,” Lal said, all traces of the smirk from before having disappeared from her face. There was a flash of vulnerability behind her armor of confidence. “But you’re a good man, Koz, and what I know of you, I do love. I just want to see where things could go. ”

Somewhat hesitantly, she reached out for his hand. “Whaddaya say?”

Koz pulled his hand out of Lal’s, shaking his head.

“Lal, I’m -”

Lal’s face fell. “Please don’t say you’re sorry. There are ways to let people down without ‘I’m sorry.’”  

“I am, though,” Kozmotis insisted. “You are - if I wasn’t your commanding officer -”

“Please don’t give me that, either,” she said just a little flatly. Then she added, with some amusement. “You really aren’t used to having to beat the women off with a stick, are you.”

Kozmotis couldn’t help but laugh. “Not so much, no. I was, to word it nicely, somewhat gawky in school and then I met...”

He trailed off.

“Ahava,” she finished for him, her voice much gentler.

He nodded. “I don’t think that I will ever be able to let her go. I know myself well enough to say that. You are - you are a magnificent person, though. I can say that without restraint. You are one of my favorite people. You’re someone that makes me wish it could be different, because you’re right, the fact that I’m your commanding officer is just an excuse. There are special dispensations...love finds a way. I can’t use that as a shield.”

He went on, “But I - I am just not the kind of man that is capable of moving on from that kind of grief.”

“Or that kind of love, I should think,” she said, seeming to have come to some sort of understanding. .

He looked at her gratefully, as if glad to be understood.

She took it in stride. “Well then, sir, I...don’t apologize for my impertinence. As we of the 5th regiment infantry always say: ‘Difficulties be damned.’ I had to give a shot.”

“And I’m honored, even if I have to say no.” With one last tight-lipped smile, he turned back to the party. “I should -”

“Of course.”    

Jack was almost surprised. “You’re turning her down?” he shouted, to Koz, speaking to the mirage for the first time. “Good! She’s too good for you!”

Lal took a deep breath, alone on the balcony, but that deep breath steadied her. She walked back into the ballroom with her head held high. Jack approved. “Believe me,” he assured the vision. “You’re better off with someone - literally _anyone_ else.”

Kozmotis, even as he relaxed back into his role as party host, looked filled with regret. Jack didn’t care. He had ceased caring for quite some time now.

However, his disinterest in watching Pitch eventually ruining his own life didn’t seem to extend to Nightlight and Rashena, who were playing at the fringes of the party. It seemed that Pitch hadn’t had the heart to make them stay elsewhere in the house while it went on (as if children could resist parties anyway). Nightlight wore his armor, as he had every time Jack had seen him, but apparently he felt the occasion warranted some dressing up because he was had tied a festive bright blue bowtie over it. Even after everything he’d suffered, the sight of it brought the smallest of smiles to Jack’s face. Rashena, on the other hand, was dressed to the nines in a fluffy purple garment that had so many frills and bows per square inch that Jack wondered how one hadn’t popped off and hit someone in the eye yet from the pressure.  

They kept to the edges of the party until Nightlight spotted a particularly pretty teenage girl with raven-black hair and blue skin who was somewhere around his age, perhaps a daughter of the one the soldiers. His eyes went a little wide and his mouth opened into a little “o” as he stared at her. Rashena smiled as she saw him staring and nudged him.

He looked down at her and shook his head, as if to ask, ‘What?’  

“Go ask her to dance. Duh,” said Rashena, who was now old enough to say things like “duh” apparently.

Nightlight hesitated. Rashena nudged him again. “Go on.”

At his surrogate sister’s encouragement, Nightlight stepped forward, walked to the girl, and waved to get her attention away from her group of friends. He opened his mouth as if to say something then gestured to his throat to try to explain that he had trouble talking.

The girl stared at him disdainfully as he held out his hand, welcoming her to dance with him. When she made no response, he did a little twirl to show his intention, before holding out his hand again.

“Reb, I think he wants to dance with you,” chirped one of her friends.  

“Well, why didn’t he just say so?”

“I don’t think he can talk.”

The girl turned up her nose. “Why would I want to dance with you? I don’t even know what you _are_.”  

Some of her friends tittered but a few looked discomfited. Nightlight mostly looked bewildered at getting such a response, and then thoughtful, as if he was trying to figure out how to even react to it. Jack supposed that, while living in the loving atmosphere of the Pitchiner home, he probably hadn’t run into nastiness like this that often.  

“Reb, that’s not very nice...” said the chirpy friend who didn’t sound so chirpy anymore.

Nightlight simply waved a hand, as if to say it was perfectly fine - or no, that it was a mistake. It was very much a “No no, I wasn’t talking to you” gesture. He gestured to the lamp right next to the sneering girl, as if he had meant to dance with it all along. Bowing a deep bow to the lamp, he took it in his arms and danced around the room with it, sashaying gracefully. Some of the adults did rather comedic double-takes when they saw the strange boy dancing around the room with a lamp, but the friends that had looked uncomfortable with Reb’s rudeness immediately started laughing and so did the watching Rashena. After a minute or two Nightlight put the lamp back and gestured to the other girls that had been laughing at his antics, as if to say, “Any takers?”

Three of them all leapt at the chance to dance with him, while sullen Reb hung back and glared. Nightlight made a game effort to dance with them all at once.  

However, when Rashena approached, he politely turned them away and immediately swept his sister up to dance with him, balancing her little feet on his and parading her around the room. Always, he seemed like a ghost, a wisp of thing that might evaporate into nothing but it was amidst Rashena’s laughter that he seemed most alive.  

“Barbaric, those Star Herders,” Jack suddenly heard behind him. Standing there was a man in a tuxedo and top hat, his face mostly hidden by a massive handlebar mustache and gratuitous amounts of sideburns. He stood with equally frumpy-looking older soldiers, and a woman in a poofy green gown. “No sense of etiquette. You’d think he’d learn from his betters living with a man like Kozmotis, but look at him rollicking around like an animal, dancing with lamps. He should know that his behavior reflects on his guardian. How dare he embarrass the man after he took him in.”

“Hey!” Jack said defensively, despite knowing the that the man wasn’t real and couldn’t hear him. “What’s barbaric are those sideburns.”

The man had looked from side to side to make sure Kozmotis hadn’t overheard, but he hadn’t looked behind him. If he had, he’d have seen both Lal and Jem literally holding Kozmotis back from flying at the man in a rage. When he finally calmed, they let him go, and stood calmly by as Koz stepped, equally calm, right behind Mr. Mustache. Quietly, he said, “Actually, I’m quite proud of him.”

The man nearly jumped a foot in the air. Apparently, Koz had gotten some practice being creepy long before he became Pitch.

“He’s come a long way since I took him in. It’s a miracle that he’s learned to laugh again.”

Crystalline laughter drifted over the sounds of the party from where Nightlight danced with Rashena, as if on cue

The mustached man looked flabbergasted as he sputtered. “I meant - I didn’t mean -”

“Of course you did,” Koz cut him off, with a veneer of snide understanding. “That’s what everyone thinks of the Star Herders. How tragic that, with him the last of them, no one will ever learn otherwise.”

“Well, it’s not entirely off base,” the man half-whined. “They’d been in contact with us for how long, and they still lived in those dank holes, fighting off those dreadful monsters with whatever spear-shaped things grew out of the ground? To say they lived for their children -” he sneered. “Their children might have done well for themselves if they’d grown up in _our_ schools, learning to be modern individuals alongside our children. I don’t know why they insisted on not sending them to be educated.” He sniffed. “Their people might have _survived_ if they had.”

Jack’s attention was on Kozmotis then. In that specific moment, he saw the darkness in Koz. He saw the coldness he was used to seeing in those eyes, rage and spite crystallizing into something solid and sharp as Koz stared the man down. He still wasn’t Pitch, because this was born of compassion and love and a mind open to things the admiral couldn’t even imagine, but Jack could see how Pitch could come from this man.

The thing that struck Jack was that, despite Pitch’s towering evil, Kozmotis was far more terrifying. He imagined the kind of monster Pitch could have been if he cared about something this much, but still felt it was okay for him to do evil in its name instead.

The first thing that came to his mind was that he finally understood - Pitch _did_ care about something this much. He cared about Jack. He cared enough to wake up Old Man Winter, and risk the world to get to him. He cared enough to drag Jack into the maze, to be tortured for turning him down.

He cared enough to trap him in the dark - him and Jamie - for how long

The ferocious streak Jack saw in Koz suggested that it could be a long, long time.

“As you well know, there are planets in the Core Worlds where they shoved their children outside of the shelters to be taken,” Koz said, in the oily tones Jack associated with Pitch’s threats. “ We pretend it doesn’t happen, and when we can’t, we nod our heads and say ‘well what else could they have done?’” Kozmotis shook his head, in mock pity, “Now, the Star Herders, on the other hand - the Star Herders fought to the bitter end. In every village, in every home, every single adult died trying to protect their children. And before the fearlings, they’d hardly known war - against the natural forces of their world, certainly, but the very concept of fighting each other was all but unimaginable. Our history, you recall, was a bit more storied than that.”

He turned on the man, the oily smoothness all slicked out of his tone. He finished with a snarl. “I should hope that someday we can aspire to their level of barbarism. So if you don’t mind, please refrain from casting aspersions on my ward’s people.”

He added, calmly, “You ignorant fathead.”   

Behind him, Jem and Lal were both facepalming. Jack almost laughed.

The mutton-chopped man, meanwhile, had turned a truly fantastic shade of purple.

“You’ll -” he sputtered. “You will regret this, _colonel,”_ he sneered. He whirled on his slightly elevated bootheel and pushed away through the crowd.

The other people that had been talking to Mr. Mustache harrumphed and walked away with a few mutters of “Well, I say!” and “The nerve!”

Lal stepped forward, still wincing. “You do know that was Admiral Flev’s husband, right?”

Koz’s mouth dropped open and then shut with a slight click, his already pale skin going paler. He breathed out a creaky, pained, “No, I did not, actually.”

Jem patted him on the back, sympathetic. “Would you like to kiss your shiny promotion goodbye now, or later?

Rashena’s scream interrupted what might have been a meltdown on her father’s part. Jack and the three officers whirled around, zeroing in on her location. Only a moment ago, she’d been holding her locket up, proudly displaying it to a captain who was a little, it seemed, deep in his cups - now, the captain had fallen to the ground, clawing at Rashena’s dress, ripping bows from it as she wriggled away. The man’s eyes rolled in his head as he pulled the little girl to him, lurching as if using his body for the first time. He reached for her throat. She twisted away but shadows formed around one of his hands into nasty-looking claws, well long enough to slice the little girl open.

The soldiers in dress uniforms were drawing their weapons. Eyes wide with terror, Kozmotis himself was rushing over as if he planned to kill the man with his bare hands.

But none of them reacted faster than Nightlight. He dashed for his spear like a beam of starlight, then vaulted himself at the man, kicking him soundly in the chest with both feet.

Shadows sprang out of the man’s mouth and eyes and ears as Nightlight brought the spear down and stabbed him in the chest. For a moment, the light at the tip flashed so bright that it was nearly blinding, suspending every figure in the room in starlight. Inhuman screams filled the air as the shadows suffered under the onslaught of light.

 

 

[ ](http://seekingskywhales.tumblr.com/tagged/reb's%20art%20adventures)

_ For a moment,the light at the tip flashed so bright that it was nearly blinding... _

_[art by seekingskywhales](http://seekingskywhales.tumblr.com/tagged/reb's%20art%20adventures) _

The boy leapt back. In a room of trained soldiers, Nightlight, first and best, kept himself between Rashena and the room, his knuckles white around his spear.

The downed man moved. The circle around him jumped back, then jumped back farther as the corpse wriggled in such a way that no healthy human moved. Long, shadowy masses snaked under his skin and poured into the air, massing above the dead man.

But they had been weakened by the light of Nightlight’s spear and without a living body to latch onto they dissolved away into nothingness.

The man no longer moved.

Mass chaos erupted. Amidst the screeching, Jack caught words. “-Fearlings -” “Who ever knew -” “- bypassed all the wards -” “- they can possess us now?”

Kozmotis had no ears for the discussion. He fell on his children, scooping the crying Rashena up in one arm and throwing the other around Nightlight. Nightlight, who hadn’t moved from his defensive position over Rashena, his eyes huge, his teeth gritted, trembled in place as if frozen there despite Koz’s one-armed hug around him.

Slowly, the trembling took over Nightlight’s body, and he dropped his spear. It clattered on the floor as he sagged into Koz’s arms, his other going around Rashena, as if their contact was a tether drawing him back from the last time he’d held his spear in defense of a child.

“It’s all right,” Kozmotis soothed, as Nightlight’s tinkling starlike weeping joined Rashena’s, as the bodyguard became a young boy again in his arms. “Ssssh, you’re both safe. You’re safe now.”

The memory fell away, leaving only Nightlight, on his knees as if still hugging an invisible man and child.

He stood, his face still streaked with tears, but his eyes were no longer wild. He hefted his spear and tilted his head at Jack, as if awaiting questions.

Jack just looked at him impassively. “So can I go now?”

Up ahead of them, Jamie screamed.

Jack charged ahead, Nightlight vanishing around the corner in front of him. A blooming field of bone-white flowers dipped on their stems to drink from a stream of blood, flowing from a small pile of meat and polyester being savaged by a hairless, Labrador-sized thing with a spine of bone spikes.

Jack had never killed anything with his bare hands before, but there was a first time for everything.

When the savaging creature was dead, and Jack’s hands were bleeding, he fell on the shredded windbreaker and spilling down vest, but no one would have called what was left with the blood-soaked fabric and feathers a body.

He screamed so loud, so long, the whole maze had to hear him. And when he was done, for good measure, he did it again.

His roar refined into words.

“IT’S - NOT - REAL!”

It was not real. It was not real. He feared this so much. He feared this, maybe more than he feared never leaving the maze himself. That was what the maze did. Made you face your fears - not the reasonable ones that, in facing, you became stronger for overcoming, but the ones that you never considered, because there was no overcoming them. There was no good to be had from thinking them over - and over - until they consumed you.

They were just horrible. And possible. And you didn’t think about them, because thinking about them too much would suck the life out of living.

Jamie couldn’t really have fallen on the Siege and died in this place.

The maze just had to know that this was a horror Jack would never forget. No matter how much he tried.

“You - think I’d just believe this,” Jack screamed, tears streaming down his face as he stood as if to face the maze around him. “I don’t! I’m not broken!”

He stopped talking, just for a moment, to sob violently into his hands. But when the moment had passed, he stood up, and though his eyes were still wet, the stream of tears had stopped. That meant, of course, that there was nothing there to wash away the blood smeared on his face.

“I’m not even breaking!” he shouted. “This isn’t real! This isn’t real. This isn’t real…”

He said it to himself again and again as he walked away, hands still soaked in blood, until he’d said it so much that the words lost their meaning.

* * *

 After ages of wandering in and out of shadows, Jack wandered into another memory. He stood silently, waiting for it to be over.

“According to the general’s report, every civilian was successfully evacuated with minimal casualties to your unit,” said a woman wearing a very fancy-looking uniform with quite a few bars on her chest. She was older than Koz, with dark skin and golden dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail. She sat there at her desk, looking over a report, while Kozmotis stood at attention in front of her.

“Yes, ma’am. We only lost five soldiers at the moonlight refinery and power plant. The reactor was going critical. We managed to get our engineers in place to prevent a meltdown, but there was an explosion in one of the control rooms. We retook the power plant only just in time.”

“Considering the circumstance - and the minimal time it took for things to be brought under control - the loss is unfortunate but most likely could not have been avoided. To suffer no other casualties among the refugees or our men and women… well, that is really quite extraordinary leadership, Colonel Pitchiner.”

“What’s most extraordinary is the discipline and skill of my unit, ma’am. They’re all fine soldiers and I’m proud to lead them.”

“Modest, as well - though don’t think I can’t see that pride burning behind your eyes Pitchiner. You trained them after all. I know your type.” She kept scanning over the reports. “You’ve climbed the command structure faster than most and no one does that without intent. I suppose you’re aiming for general now.”

She put the report down. Kozmotis looked more nervous as he stood.

“Of course, promotions are not without their politics. Even a stellar record doesn’t guarantee you one. There is the matter of personal judgement on the part of the admirals.”

Pitch finally spoke up, “Ma’am, if this is about the party -”

“Save it,” Admiral Flev said sharply.

“My apologies, ma’am.”  

“Your apologies indeed. My husband said you never did apologize to him for your remarks. I suppose the unfortunate incident with Captain Kallus prevented that, but would you now?”

Kozmotis stood silent for a moment, working his jaw. Finally he took a deep breath and said, “No, I would not, ma’am. He insulted my ward’s people and essentially called him a barbarian - and he did it under my roof. If standing up for a child in one’s care, and for a people that can no longer speak up for themselves, is something to be punished, then I will suffer it gladly.”  

“Indeed you would,” the admiral said sternly.Then she cracked the smallest inkling of a smile “ _If_ I didn’t know that my husband can be a tremendous blowhard. I love the man - he’s far more generous in his actions than he is in his words - but some of his beliefs are so antiquated they could be appraised by a museum curator. There was no call for what he said and he and I have had a little talk. Do expect a written apology arriving in the mail sometime soon - to you _and_ your ward, if you’re inclined to share it with him. Although you should expect your formal notice of promotion to arrive much sooner.”

“Ma’am?” Kozmotis said, his voice cracking just slightly in bewilderment.

“Only five men lost in a campaign that size, every civilian accounted for, and you’re uncompromising enough in your integrity to stand before admiral and be utterly unapologetic for defending a child in your care? If that’s not leadership material, I don’t know what is. We’re going to need men like you in high places, especially now that the fearlings are developing new abilities.”

“Thank you, Admiral Flev,” said a still bewildered Kozmotis. “I will endeavor to exceed the expectations of and you and the other admirals.”   

“Let’s just hope that your leadership skills continue to outshine your skills at diplomacy, General Pitchiner.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Kozmotis somewhat breathlessly, his voice going a bit more wry. “That is indeed the hope.” 

The memories shifted suddenly around him. Kozmotis sat in his home, reading some sort of tablet. Rashena and Nightlight were on the floor beside his chair with a board game spread between them. Rashena appeared to be winning.

Nightlight claimed a piece, however, and laughed a short burst of triumph. Koz looked up from his technology, nodding with a smile as Rashena yielded one of her pieces. Nightlight leaned against the arm of the chair. Absently, Koz rested his fingers on Nightlight’s hair, petting him lightly as he read.

The children played, and Kozmotis read for a moment longer before he seemed to consider what he was doing. His fingers paused in Nightlight’s hair as he looked at the children, who played happily on.

“He acted like her bodyguard at first,” said Koz’s voice, as if in a voiceover. The image of the family became smudged as another memory bled into it. Shadows of Jem and Koz walked through the memory, wavering in and out of clear view, the interior of one of their ships just discernible as they walked through it and the memory of the living room. “But I don’t want to think of one child as bodyguard to another. I don’t want him to think of himself as anything but her brother. As my son.”

“So when do you get the adoption papers?” Jem asked.

Both spectral memories gusted away like puffs of smoke, leaving Kozmotis still walking, down the long hall, to the door - the towering door with the countless intricate locks, to the guard post Jack had seen him take in that first memory.

The whispers waited until the silence was so heavy that their sound was almost a relief to hear.

**_“Ahava.”_**

Koz gritted his teeth, sucking in his breath. There was sweat on his brow, and the lines around his eyes had deepened since he first took up his post.

It seemed to have been many years since he first stood at the door. Many years - or a few short, horrible ones

“You have no power here,” he hissed, but there was an uneven quality to his voice. “Using her to hurt me won’t change that.”

 **“ _she still cries for you to come save her,”_ ** the whispers hissed. There was a tone to their whispers similar to the satisfied moans of a hungry person biting into the first food they’d seen all day. **“ _she begs you to come rescue her from her agony.”_**

Something inside the prison banged, hard, against the door.

“Kozmotis!”

Ahava’s voice poured through unseen cracks in the doors dissolving into pained weeping at the end. 

Koz kicked the door. “Settle down in there,” he growled, gritting his teeth, anger wrinkling his brow to a severity Jack had only seen when the possessed captain had tried to kill Rashena.

“Kozmotis, my love,” Ahava sobbed. The thuds against the door grew softer, like a woman letting her palms land against them. There was a scraping sound of a body sliding down the door. “Are you there? Please say you’re there -”

“I said stop it!”

And suddenly Pitch - no, he was Kozmotis still - was kicking the door, and hammering it with his fists, his teeth clenched so tight that it seemed he would crack them.

The hall rang with the echoes of his assault on the door when he stopped, breathing heavily, the whispers and the weeping silenced.

The weeping came, slowly, back.

"I'm sorry," Ahava cried, as if Kozmotis had struck her, and not the door. "I'm sorry - I know - you can't trust -" she broke off into more quiet cries. "Please, this once. Trust me, my love. Let me out. They tear me apart again and again in here. Please let me out -”

“You’re not real,” Kozmotis said, softly, sadness in his voice. “You’re dead. I held your body. I pushed the button that sent your casket into the quasar -”

“I’m not my body,” Ahava said, plaintive, soft. “Please. Let me go -”

“Just shut up,” Kozmotis whispered, a hiss that cut through the whispers. “Just - for today, won’t you shut up? Just once -”

There was silence behind the door, but not too much, before Ahava’s voice came back. “There’s nothing I can say to convince you,” she mused, sadly. “You’re too - too you for that. Even if you believed me, you’d never open the door.”

“The risk would be too great,” Kozmotis agreed.

“You’ll stand guard forever, with this door always between us.”

“I would,” Koz confirmed, the lines in his face deepening.

“You’d leave me here in the dark, with them, forever.”

The horror of that settled on him, visibly like a weight. Kozmotis slouched beneath it.

"You'd listen to them rip my soul apart, and you'd guard them while they did it."

Kozmotis closed his eyes, and tears ran through the deep creases around his eyes, the frown-lines digging deep around his mouth.

“Nothing you say,” he whispered, “will make me open these doors.”

Ahava didn’t weep anymore - didn’t say anything for a moment, as the whispers hissed softly - as if gathering - behind the door.

“At least touch me once, before they tear me apart,” she asked. “Please. Don’t let me go without any comfort -”

Black fingers extended under the door - but they were the black of a night sky full of stars, and the silver nails were chipped, ragged and bleeding.

Kozmotis' mouth opened in a silent scream as the fingers groped for his.

Eyes wide, he reached down, slowly, to touch them.

And suddenly, they were gone. They could never have been there. There was no crack between the floor and the lower edge of the towering doors, no seam even for a woman's slim fingers to snake under.

He stood again, at attention, eyes shut tight to keep the brimming tears from falling, taking deep breaths to calm himself.

“You could have stopped taking guard duty, but you couldn’t let them know it was affecting you,” Jack said, his voice flat with growing hatred and disdain. “That’s why all this is going to come apart at the seams.”

He hadn’t gone without learning a few things from Anansi about stories and one of the primary lessons he’d learned was how dangerous pride was and how it always led to a fall.

“You were too proud to tell anyone the great General Pitchiner couldn’t hack it, after putting so many of them away.”

Pitchiner stood there shaking and Jack had trouble feeling pity for him. A part of him did. A part of him always would feel compassion for others, even through rage and pain, but right now the rage and pain was so strong that the part of him that was kind had been reduced to a whisper.

“And because you couldn’t walk away, because you couldn’t let people know you couldn’t do it, that’s why Jamie -” He swallowed thickly. “That’s why Jamie might be dead, if all that was real. It’s why I’m here. It’s why there’s a Pitch Black, isn’t it.”  

He smiled a smile that was almost deranged.

“When I get out of here, I'm going to tell everyone. I'm going to tell them all your secrets. I'm going to tell them all your fears. I'm going to tell them all about Kozmotis Pitchiner, the weak link that let fear get into _my world._ Maybe someday Pitch will even be you again so that it actually hurts.”

Kozmotis said nothing, of course - just stood, proud as ever, as the whispers started up again.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We decided to post this a little early as a Halloween treat, since it's one of our darkest and scariest chapters. 
> 
> Prepare to have your hearts broken. 
> 
> Also, just a heads up but we have a playlist for the fic on youtube if anyone's interested, at: 
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUgC6215Gko&feature=share&list=PLNbpO46bUJJy36cmStyaTr-nUnTIPwLEm
> 
> We listen to that when we're writing it, so I figured some of you might enjoy listening to it while reading. 
> 
> Many of the trigger warnings for the fic apply to this chapter, some psychological mindfuckery/breakdown, Stockholmsy stuff, character death, abuse, gaslighting, etc. I won't say which characters it applies to, but if you find those things upsetting, this chapter might be a little intense for you. Read at your own discretion and if any of you don't think you can read the chapter but want to know what happens because you think you'll be able to handle later chapters, scroll down to the reviews and let me know and I can put a little chapter summary in a comment for you.

The maze seemed to want to show him more of Pitch’s life lately and so as Jack walked, the world shimmered again. Now Koz was walking down golden halls with papers in his hands. Jack caught a glimpse of the word “Formal request for adoption,” and then the world shifted again to Koz on one of the video phone things.

“I’d like to make arrangements for a bodyguard for my children -”

The stinging hatred in Jack’s heart faded and resolved into something more painful and confusing. Overwhelmed, he crouched down, rocking slightly in place, holding his head as the world shifted again and Kozmotis was once again standing guard at the door.

It _hurt_ to feel hatred and pity at the same time. It hurt to feel compassion for the person that had caused him so much pain. He hated Pitch, but the goodness of the man he’d been made Jack hate himself for feeling it.  

The shadows were silent this time and Kozmotis seemed pleased with himself, as if he thought he’d learned to tune them out.

Then, out of the silence, five words were whispered:

**_“we have something of yours.”_ **

The next sound was a terrified scream so heartwrenching that even Jack found himself instinctively moving towards the door.

_“DADDY!”_

The rest...the rest Jack felt and saw as if the memories were his own. He was drawn so deep into it that he lost all sense of himself. Fear overwhelmed him, stole into his heart and took it over, pumping cold in his chest.

Even as he undid the wards and turned the locks, as other soldiers ran in from the guard station as they registered the breaking of the wards, all he could think of was saving Rashena. Thoughts of how she’d gotten in there, or whether or not it was even possible, didn’t even enter his head.

The years of silent, uncomplaining guard duty had ground him down as fragile as a thread. The whispers had reduced him to a being that was simply the sum of his fears.  

He flung the doors opened before the other soldiers could stop him, and the entire world turned into pain and darkness. The only emotions he felt were hatred and fear. His vision flashed red with images of soldiers falling, clawed by dark, tearing hands.

There was a brief flash of Jem Breen in front of him with other soldiers, sword in hand.

“Koz, please! Stand down and we can get you to a hospital -”

His vision went red again.

Finally he came to, hunched over on his knees, agonized by something alien burning and squirming under his skin. Things were boring their way, wriggling, into his soul. Soldiers lay dead around him. Screams echoed from elsewhere in the prison base. A black flood issued from the vault, vanishing into the distance of the base and leaving the prison room silent as the grave it had become.

He lurched forward, but the face of one of the bloody bodies made him stop and gasp.

Jem Breen’s throat was ripped open. His eyes were still wide with betrayal.

Suddenly, Jack was himself again, watching from the outside. The sensations of being lost inside Kozmotis’ head left him bowed over on the floor, nearly retching.

Kozmotis knelt on the floor and actually did retch, but he didn’t throw up food. The substance that spewed from his mouth was an inky black that didn’t look like it should’ve been inside a human being.

Jack could see the shadows threading under his skin, breaking through the surface as they crawled through his body. As he staggered forward, Kozmotis began to slough away. The shadows were ripping the armor off of him, tearing at his clothes and replacing them with something dark and fluid. His body was a battle of man and shadow, and the shadows were melting his humanity away..

Yet it was still there.

“Rashena,” he coughed out. “Nightlight.”

He ran from the base and Jack followed, compelled by what had become morbid fascination. After everything he’d seen so far, he needed to know how it ended. Even if only to understand what had created the monster that had caused his own suffering.  

Had it started here? Pitch’s hatred of children? Were Rashena and Nightlight going to be the first to fall to him? Was there any chance at all that they had escaped this nightmare and lived?

(And if they had, was there any chance at all that he could, too?)

As Pitch raced through the hallways, at times staggering, at others moving faster than he should have been able to, slipping through any shadows as if they were his home, he looked at the carnage that had been wrought by the fearlings with abject horror.

Soldiers lay fallen everywhere, some of them with swords in their hands, others seemingly taken entirely by surprise.

“Stop! Don’t let him get away!”

Some were still alive, though, and a cadre of injured soldiers swarmed around Kozmotis as he turned down a hallway.

“S-stay back! I’m warning you!” he cried at them.

“We are not letting you leave this base, Pitchiner.”

It seemed, in light of what he’d done - and in light of what he now was - the appellative of “general” was one they felt he didn’t deserve anymore.

Pitch started laughing at that, in a voice that was far more oily than before - and far more familiar to Jack.

“That’s General Pitchiner to you. Not that it matters anymore, all these stripes and stars and the saluting - why did I ever do that? No, all that matters now are the shadows. All that matters is _fear_.”  

He grinned at them in such an unnerving way, shadows billowing around him, that they staggered a few steps back.

“I can taste it, you know. I can _feel_ your fear. You, there -” he pointed. “- you’re afraid you’ve got internal injuries. You’re terrified you’re going to die here, before you get a chance to make things right with your husband. And you, you’ve got a daughter in the creche on Danule, just a few parsecs from here. You’re wondering if they’ll get them into the shelters in time - if the shelters will even hold under such a barrage.”

Kozmotis’ eyes went wide but it was a kind of manic delight and then he said with a matter-of-fact curl of his upper lip. “They won’t, just for the record. My fearlings are going to tear their souls to - NNNNGH! Nooooo!”

Kozmotis lurched back against the wall, the shadows dying down slightly behind him. “I won’t let you - get out of my head!”

The soldiers were even more disturbed by his behavior now, but their faces weren’t without pity - even if their pity was laced with disgust at Kozmotis’ weakness.

“Surrender now and we may be able to get you medical attention.”

Kozmotis wept in sudden anguish. “No, my children, I have to - they’re going to go after my children!”

“Stand down or we _will_ put you down,” said the soldier, and he and the others advanced.

“NO!” Kozmotis roared. For a moment, it looked as if he’d attack them, but he stopped as something in his face twitched from hatred to fear. He melted suddenly into the shadows and out of view. Jack was pulled after as if tethered to Pitch, yelping in alarm. For just a moment as he passed through the dark, he saw a strange and horrible vision of many beings hiding in it - or maybe beings that made it up and gave it form, staring at him with hollow eyes. Then he was in the light again, watching as Kozmotis made his way towards a ship in some kind of docking bay. Several soldiers got in his way and he threw them to the side like rag dolls, leaving them alive, but broken.

Jack followed him onto a ship and Kozmotis frantically powered up the controls, piloting it out of the docking port and steering into space.

As he flew, he turned on some kind of radio.

_“ - attacks on every major city -”_

He flicked the channel. _“- reports that every Core World is under attack -”_

He flicked it again. _“ - all citizens should evacuate to their nearest transit ship location or the closest local fearling shelter -”_

It was the same on every world. Every frequency was filled with reports of attacks, defense efforts, evacuations, death, and misery. Every channel had panicked voices crying out in the dark. Kozmotis was beside himself as he listened to it, weeping quietly, shaking from head to toe. His huffing, hyperventilating breaths filled the cabin of the ship, and Jack would have given anything to drown them out. The sound of them irritated him as much as they saddened him.

But as the radio droned on, those huffing breaths turned to giddy, mad laughter. Jack couldn't repress the shudder that went down his spine as that laughter turned into familiar cackling that Jack was used to hearing echo out from the shadows.

But suddenly the laughter stopped and Kozmotis started beating himself in the head.

"No! No, I won't let you. I won't let you. This is my mind," he hissed. " _My!_ Mind!"

He smashed the radio with a cry of misery, ripping it out with his clawed hands, pounding on the controls and weeping like a child throwing a tantrum. The shadows infiltrated his flesh deepere as Jack watched. His skin grew paler, and his eyes were changing from clear grey to a familiar, sinister yellow.

One eye stayed clear. Kozmotis still held ground.

Jack heard the shadows speaking inside the man's head now, just like he'd heard them many times before.

**_“you're ours now, kozmotis. it's time you learned a lesson in accepting the inevitable.”_ **

"I won't. Do you hear me? I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my own soul. And you can suck on that and _choke.”_

Jack couldn't help but feel some admiration for how hard Kozmotis was fighting, but his admiration was still tempered by the knowledge of how this had all started in the first place. And tempered further still by his awareness that the fight Kozmotis was putting up was one he would not win.

The ship lurched into hyperspeed. Stars streaked around them, some freezing in place as the ship pivoted and sling-shotted through space. Flaming spiral arms of energy flew behind them, perfectly still, in the space of a breath. Then the ship dropped out of hyperspeed as it approached a planet.

Once upon a time Jack had thought the waves of shadows crashing over Burgess had been intimidating, but that was nothing compared to the sight of a planet consumed by darkness. Great masses of swarming fearlings collected in orbit around the planet. In the breaks of the clouds of darkness, he saw long tendrils swarming down to the planet in an overwhelming attack. Ships were massed in orbit as well, firing on the fearlings with weapons that glowed in the dark like little shooting stars or bursts of ball lightning, but it was difficult to tell who was winning. The fearlings struck down many ships, imploding them without even a flash of light, but at the same time whole sections of the dark clouds were disappearing.    

Jack understand as he watched why the fearlings had been imprisoned, rather than destroyed.  Streams of particles, like some kind of black dust, went flowing away from the battle, perhaps to head off to some dark, empty rock, devoid of light and life, where the fearlings could reform. They couldn't be killed, only scattered to the winds. No wonder they'd kept the fearlings locked up. Maybe they'd planned on doing it long enough to figure out how to destroy them for good.

Or maybe, since they were made from children, they'd held out a sad, desperate hope that someday they'd find a way to change them back.

"Oh Solus no," Kozmotis whispered at the horrific sight of the planet besieged. He took the ship in, piloting it towards a gap in the shadow-mass. Nearby implosions rocked the ship and Jack heard things tearing into the metal. It kept lurching until he could not longer stand and fearing that the vision would hurt him otherwise - as the maze was never shy about causing him injury - Jack slipped into the seat next to Kozmotis, unseen as usual, finding it solid, and strapped himself in.

**_“we've already taken them from you, Kozmotis.”_ **

"You're lying!" He cried out, spittle flying from his lips. "You've always lied!"

**_“what will you be when they're gone? that is what we wonder. what will you be when you have nothing left, when we've carved out your heart.”_ **

**_“we can't wait to see.”_ **

The ship took another hit and careened out of control, falling with such speed and dizzying motion that even Jack found himself getting nauseous. Kozmotis hit some buttons and managed to gain some control over the ship just before it crashed into someone's garden, but the force of the harness still almost broke Jack's ribs.   

Kozmotis didn't give him a moment to catch his breath, though; he was already out of his seat and moving the moment they landed. Jack leapt up to follow him.

He had to know. He had to know if Rashena and Nightlight had gotten out of this okay.

Screams of terror came from everywhere, mixed with the fearlings' screeches and childish, mocking laughter. Up the street, a group of soldiers fought in defense of the civilians they were herding to safety. A woman screamed as her son was ripped out of her arms and Jack had to fight the instinctive urge to run over and help. He turned away to avoid seeing the little boy’s fate. The woman's despondent screams made it clear without him having to look at all.

Kozmotis darted in between alleyways, hiding from the soldiers, but also moving as quickly as he could. He ducked through a garden and into his massive estate, up by itself on a little hill, surrounded by fields and gardens. The mansion's intricate glass windows littered the lawn in fragments, and the door had been caved in.

Koz’s eyes went wide at the sight, with the fear many parents hoped they’d never feel.

"Rashena!" he cried out as he broke into a run. "Nightlight!"

No force on Earth could have stopped him in that moment. His hand reached for his sword, but in all the chaos, it was gone.

He dropped his hand, and shadowlike claws grew from it. His jaw was set in a way that said he'd decided he didn't need a sword.   

The interior of the house was in shambles, furniture broken, walls gouged by claws. Kozmotis let out a single sob when he saw Nanny Gliggs’ blood-soaked body in the kitchen, a cooking knife still in her hand

All hope was lost.

But then Jack saw the dust and so did Kozmotis. Black dust,the nothing stuff of dead fearlings, streamed steadily from somewhere deeper in the house, pouring away into the atmosphere to escape the one that had torn them apart. Kozmotis turned a hallway where a mass of fearlings waited for him, but they were focused on something else.

They were focused on the boy standing guard in front of a door.

Nightlight stabbed one fearling, then another, the tip of his spear glowing. He slashed at the next, and they dissipated one by one. But he was exhausted and injured, as if he’d been keeping this up for a very long time. There was no telling how long he had left before he collapsed.

He didn’t have to fight any longer, though. Father was home.

With a roar of paternal rage, Kozmotis ripped into the fearlings with his bare hands. He and Nightlight fought their way through the cloud until Kozmotis found himself staring at the end of Nightlight’s spear.

His eyes were terrified, but clear - and he looked at Kozmotis with justified uncertainty.

“It’s me,”  Kozmotis assured him. “I know I don’t look like myself right now, but it’s me. Nightlight - son, I came for you -”

Nightlight looked as if he wanted to speak, or cry, or faint. He settled for fainting.

Kozmotis caught him as he fell. “It’s going to be alright,” he soothed, but indigo-tinted blood was seeping over his armor at rates that said, no, it would not be. Kozmotis saw, and clutched the boy tighter. “Nightlight - listen to me, listen to my voice. I’m here with you. It’s going to be -”

 _“I protected her -”_ Nightlight choked out, and Kozmotis paused. _“I protected my sister,_ ” he said, looking to the closed door.

The faint sound of a little girl whimpering filtered through.

 _“Are you proud of me?_ ” Nightlight asked, pulling Koz’s attention back to him. _“Father?”_

He said the word tentatively, as if he hadn’t used it before.

“Yes, my boy,” Kozmotis drew Nightlight closer in his arms, reaching up with one hand to pet Nightlight’s hair. “Yes, my dear, brave boy. I am so proud of you.”

He rocked the dying boy, petting his hair, as the pool of indigo blood grew beneath them.

“I brought the adoption papers,” Koz said, as he rocked his son. “To make it official. I was going to tell you today. Would you like that? To make it official?”

But Nightlight’s eyes were open and unblinking, staring up at the broken roof, blank and dark and full of stars, no musical breath whispering through his lungs.

Rashena still whimpered on the other side of the door. Koz bowed his head over Nightlight’s body and wept, containing himself to silent racking sobs.

Jack felt his knees drop out from under him and he knelt besides them, staring at the dead boy’s face, feeling as if he’d been punched in the gut.

The only thing in the maze that had been good, or bright, or kind, had been this story - had been Nightlight.

He’d hoped so long that there could have been some kind of happy ending - or at least a safe ending - for Nightlight and Rashena. He’d always held on to the hope that no matter how damaged Kozmotis had become, his children had managed to escape it.

That hope crumpled as the man who was already half the nightmare king rocked his dead son.

When he’d wept away the sharpest edge of his grief, Kozmotis laid his son’s body out, folding Nightlight’s hands over his chest, brushing a strand of silver-white hair off his forehead before closing his eyes with a gentle hand. He paused once more, as if fixing the image of the child in his mind, then went to the door that hid Rashena.

“Rashena - darling, it’s all right, it’s me,” he said, as he touched the door handle.

“NO!” there was a thud as Rashena threw herself against the door. “YOU CAN’T COME IN!”

“It’s me,” Kozmotis insisted. “It’s Daddy, Rashena, darling it’s Daddy.”

“I don’t believe you!”

And well she shouldn’t. Jack abruptly remembered the fearlings’ words from before. The question of what Kozmotis would become without his heart.

Tears welled in Kozmotis’ remaining grey eye as he considered this. He didn’t have long for what he’d told Rashena to be the truth. He felt the fearlings eating away at his soul, just as he felt them still wriggling under his skin.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” he admitted. “Sweetheart - I need to protect you now. I don’t have a lot of time to do it.”

Soon he’d no longer be himself. That weight settled on him, horror seeping cold into his heart.

“Where’s Nightlight?”

“Safe,” he said without a moment’s pause and Jack could see a tear rolling down his face at the lie. “Already safe. Now I have to protect you.”

The click of the unlocking door pierced the silent hallway. He pushed the door open a crack, but a fearling shot around the corner like a predatory fish shooting at a helpless shred of bait. Kozmotis tore the fearling apart with clawed hands, slammed the door shut, locked it, and shoved a dresser in front of it.   

Rashena huddled in the corner, looking at him with terror. Her little face scrunched up and she dissolved into tears as he approached.

“It’s still me,” Kozmotis insisted, holding his own tears back, but barely. “The fearlings have hurt me but it’s still me. Rashena, I need to protect you. Please.”

Tears ran down her face, but she didn’t take her eyes off him. “How?”

He pulled something from underneath his armor - an amulet on a gold chain. “I saved this,” he said, cupping it in his palms. He didn’t add “for the worst,” but it was suggested. “It’s a very powerful spell. It will keep you safe until -”

He stopped, as the shadows writhed within him, making him wince. Rashena’s wide, terrified eyes were the first thing he saw when he opened his again.

“It will keep you safe,” he repeated, concentrating on the amulet as it hovered over his palm, growing a golden-orange globe that slid over Rashena, then began to shrink, adhering to the shape of her skin where it touched her. “For a long time.”

“ _How_ long?” Rashena pushed.

Kozmotis breathed out. “For as long as I love you.”

 

_"For as long as I love you."_

[ _art by seekingskywhales_ ](http://seekingskywhales.tumblr.com/tagged/reb's%20art%20adventures)

Rashena’s eyes welled up. She placed her hand over his arm, pressing against the thin film of the bubble as it compressed around her. It coated her arm as she reached for her father, slowly solidifying from a dull, glassy orange, to a bright, shimmering gold.

Kozmotis had just begun to reach for her when the wall behind her flew backwards, sucking Rashena and the half-completed spell with it.

Kozmotis screamed and grabbed at her, but his fingers only closed around her locket as she was sucked away, the chain snapping against her neck. A mass of fearlings swallowed her up, darker than a black hole, silencing her scream as abruptly as a slap as she vanished from sight.

Kozmotis fell on the broken ground, breathing heavily in the silence left by his vanished daughter. His heaving breath was the only sound as it resolved, raggedly, into long, despairing sobs.

Jack cried, too. An old sorrow that he’d felt many times before touched his heart - the sorrow of living in a universe so unfair that children were killed in it, or lost, sometimes no matter how hard their loved ones fought for them.

Kozmotis grieved for his children. But the grief was short. Because in his grief, Jack could see him giving up - and giving in. He didn’t resist as his skin rolled like the surface of the sea, shadows dissolving the last fragments of his armor, greying his skin, pooling around him, not like clothing, but like a blinding absence of light.

He looked up, straight through Jack, with the yellow eyes Jack had so come to dread seeing - and worse, a decidedly hungry leer.

Jack’s pity roiled with his disappointment in a confusing miasma. Grief had broken Kozmotis, and there was no part of Jack that couldn’t understand - even sympathise with it.

But he’d given up. He’d allowed the fearlings to consume him, taking his grief with them. Kozmotis had been nearly a Guardian - but now, with children still left in his world, dying and being torn apart at the soul, he’d given up.

The thought crept into Jack’s head. “I would have held out longer.”

Maybe that was pride, though. He’d never felt fearlings trying to shred his soul apart. Maybe his pride was as dangerous as Pitch’s. He’d thought he could handle guarding the door of the fearlings’ prison alone, after all. And look where that had lead him.

Look where that had lead Jack.

 _I **would** have held out longer._ Jack couldn’t help but think it. Maybe it was true, or maybe it was just the anger that roiled in his gut at Kozmotis for giving up instead of standing against the weight of that grief and becoming deeper and wiser under it.

Kozmotis had let Pitch come into existence. And that had lead Jack here, to be tortured endlessly, to watch a child _he_ loved die.

Jack’s anger settled into him, burning and thick, like a deep wound.

Pitch Black rose in his pool of shadow and strolled, almost casually, through the broken door. He paused, lifting his hand curiously as he registered the locket still clutched in his fingers. Pitch considered the locket without a hint of recognition, turning it over with absent curiosity, as one might study a strange stone or leaf.

Jack expected him, from his look, to toss it aside - but instead he slipped it into the shadows falling from him, where it stayed. The gesture was still casual, as someone who picked up a piece of litter might pocket it to throw away later, rather than putting it back where it was.

He spared a similarly disinterested glance at Nightlight’s body as he passed it - but the glance lingered, his eyes narrowed, as if he was fixing the image of the boy in his head. The pale, glowing boy, dead on the ground, with his gleaming black armor, and his white hair brushed carefully off his forehead.

Jack lifted a hand to his own forehead, brushing a lock of his own white hair out of the way, and shivered.

He was an image. That was all. He was an image, to Pitch, locked in his mind, digging at some deep recess of feeling that remembered being a father to a pale, white-haired boy. _A corpse,_ Jack thought, chilled even deeper. Pale as the dead - as he was.

Pitch stepped over the body as if it were nothing. He kept walking - back out of the mansion, into the street, where the fearlings massed around him like a tidal wave standing in place.

“Well, well,” he said, Pitch Black in full, his oily tones dripping with contentment, smiling as if the screams from the distance, the sight of the broken buildings, was artful. “Isn’t this a _fearful_ time to be alive.”

He spread his jagged-nailed fingers, and the tidal wave of fearlings crashed down.

* * *

Jack could only watch as he wreaked havoc on the city, melting from shadow to shadow, directing the fearlings in their attacks. They were sentient, but not the most intelligent, so Jack could see why they'd wanted Kozmotis. Every ounce of cunning, every bit of tactical planning he'd used in defense of innocents was now at their disposal to hurt them instead. He danced from each scene of pain and suffering, as if it was a game, swelling on the scope of the fear he caused.

The horror went on and on until Jack could only huddle in place, eyes shut to the devastation of the whole planet, hands over his ears to keep out the screams as he was dragged along in Pitch’s wake.

Eventually, Pitch attacked the spaceport. Countless soldiers had massed there to defend the civilians evacuating. He unleashed his fearlings on them as a distraction and blended in and out of the shadows as he approached the exteriors of the ships. His fearlings immediately set themselves to work on them tearing into them. Sabotage, most likely.

"Look at them," he said to one of the fearlings swarming around him as he gazed down on the soldiers fighting on a platform below. "Flinging themselves out into the black as if it'll save them from the dark. It's time they learned a lesson in accepting the inevitable. Who could possibly stand a chance against us?"

"Me, I’m hoping," came a wry voice behind him. He turned, his eyes narrowing in near-recognition as he looked on the soldier standing behind him.

Captain Lal Jelias looked a bit worse for wear. Her helmet had a massive gash in it and it looked like that gash extended to her face. If she survived the day, she’d have another scar to add to her impressive collection.

But even as blood dripped down her face, she stood strong, sword in hand, facing Kozmotis.

Kozmotis - no, Pitch - laughed. "And who are you supposed to be?"

"You really don't remember, do you?"

"Remember what?" Pitch eyed her sword with disdain, as if it was a child's toy. "Do you think you're going to kill me?"

"I think I'm going to stop you. Without you, the fearlings won't be able to organize and we'll have a chance against them. Cut off the head and the body dies. _How_ I'm going to go about it depends on you."

She shook her head, just for a moment, looking vulnerable - even pained.

"Why, Koz? Why did you do it? You let them get to you, didn't you. Let them get into your head." Now she looked angry. "We had psychiatrists on staff for a reason. But I know you, it was your damned pride, wasn't it. Couldn't let anyone know you were struggling. The great General Kozmotis Pitchiner never struggles with anything, does he."

Pitch's eyes flashed with the slightest recognition at the sound of his old name. For now he seemed too interested by the conversation to attack her.  

"What are you even talking about? Who's Kozmotis Pitchiner? Ridiculous name."

"It’s your ridiculous name," Lal said. "Or at least it was yours before you were this."

Pitch laughed incredulously. "I wasn't anyone before I was this!"

"Bullshit you weren't. I know you're in there somewhere, Koz. You were a good man and you could be one again - you could even help stop this. Then we can get you help."

"I don't _need_ help,” Pitch drawled, in an oily, bored tone. “None of what you say makes sense. I was made of the shadows. I _made_ myself out of the dark. And now I will rule over this world and every other and turn them all into a place where fear consumes  -"

"Oh, cut the crap!" Lal interrupted, not at all impressed by his monologuing. "Your name is Kozmotis Pitchiner. You're an idiot who doesn't know how to ever ask for help. You’re always embarrassed about how one drink can put you under the table and when we were in the academy, you stole the dean's bloomers and put them on the statue in the courtyard so it was the first thing he saw when he got up for reveille the next morning. You had horrible taste in women, until Ahava, who you doted over like a puppy dog - and I told you once that I loved you, which, in light of recent developments, doesn’t say much for my taste in men, either.”

Pitch was actually listening to her, still staring at the locket in his hand, flashes of familiarity in his hard, disapproving gaze.

She finished, "But you're a damn good soldier, a damn good person, and a damn good father -"

"I don't have children!" burst out of Pitch's mouth in a bout of sudden rage, as if the very idea was offensive. The volume died down and for a moment he looked lost. "I don't have children. The very idea's ridiculous."

His reaction - the pain behind the anger - was palpable. Lal huffed out a grieved sound. Jack supposed she’d guessed what had put Kozmotis over the edge. She and Jem Breen had known Nightlight and Rashena. They’d known what the children meant to their father.

"If it's so ridiculous," Lal said, her eyes glassy, "then why'd you just reach your hand in your pocket and pull out that necklace?"

Indeed, even as he’d been denying that he was a father, his hand had moved as if it had a mind of its own to pull out Rashena's locket. Pitch looked down where it lay, glimmering in his hand, confused. His expression flashed with a vulnerability Jack had never seen on Pitch’s face before, only Koz's. 

"It was your daughter's. Kid showed it off at every opportunity. Open it, Koz," Jelias urged him, only now betraying emotion with her quaking voice. "Open it and remember, because if you don't, I'll have no other choice than to put you down."

He held it in his palm and Jack could see he was considering it, caught at a crossroads between being something terrible and remembering something terrible. For a moment, the expression on his face was that of someone falling from a great height and seeing the ground rushing up towards them.

But in the end, it seemed, he decided not to fall.

"You're just trying to distract me," he said, suddenly looking up, curling his fingers around the locket and sliding it back out of view. His head cocked at an angle that was almost reptilian. “It won’t work.”  

"I'm trying to _help_ you."

"And who will help _you_?" Pitch said with a wicked smile, he and his fearlings melting into the shadows of the parked ships. His shadow flitted over the walls and she turned to follow it. "Little Lal Jelias, always alone,  ever since you were a child. So afraid to let anyone in out of fear they'd hurt you just like daddy. And now you don't know if letting them in even matters. That's what you're most afraid of - that no one will ever love you, because you're too damaged, because you're too angry even if you stuff it all down and try to channel it into doing good. You're afraid they'll smell it on you and know that deep down inside, past the bravado and the false calm, that you're _just_ like your father."

If he expected that little bit of manipulation to hit the mark, apparently, he had picked the wrong person to try it on.

"Well," she said mildly. "That settles the whole 'should I kill him?' debate. You're going to hell and I'm gonna put you there. Decision made."

"You can't even touch me unless I want you to. I am darkness, I am the night - "

"Yeah, yeah," Jack muttered. "You're Batman." He turned to Lal, "Please tell me this ends with you kicking his butt."

A fearling oozed out of the shadows behind Lal, claws raised as Pitch kept talking to distract.

"I guess not," Jack muttered miserably as it loomed up behind her.

"Funny thing about the night..." said Lal, reaching to her belt. Just as the fearling went in to slash at her back, she turned around in one swift movement to slice it in half one-handed, then turned back as Pitch loomed out of the shadows with clawed hands. Holding it right in front of his face, she pressed a button on the whatever-it-was and it lit up the entire area with a blinding flash.

"It's a helluva lot easier to deal with when you've got a flashlight."

When the light faded, there were still spots floating in Jack's eyes and as they faded, he saw that the whatever it was had disappeared but it had also destroyed the fearlings hanging around Pitch and left the Nightmare King in an agonized heap on the ground.

But he didn't stay that way for long. Before she could even think about killing or capturing him, he climbed to his feet and leapt up towards her with shadowy claws raised, trying to take off her head. She dodged, though his upward swipe gouged her face yet again, narrowly missing her eye, and knocked her helmet right off of her head.

To Jack, watching the fight that followed was somehow even more intense than it had been fighting Pitch himself. Weakened by the light weapon, Pitch was forced to attack her directly with his shadowy claws and the two of them danced around each other, claws slashing, sword flashing, jumping from platform to platform, climbing up ledges and vaulting over the mechanized obstacles of the spaceport. Jack jumped and climbed after them, wanting desperately to see how it all ended.

Lal Jelias moved as though she knew every one of Pitch’s steps, though, while Pitch moved as though he’d never fought this woman before - or didn’t want to remember fighting alongside her. In time, she had Pitch backing closer and closer to the edge of an empty platform, hundreds of feet above the shadow-swarmed ground below.

Pitch seemed unbothered by this, as he glanced over his shoulder at the nothingness threatening to embrace him. “Do you really think a little _gravity_ is going to kill Fear?”

“Back up and find out,” Lal hissed through gritted teeth, and kicked Pitch sharply in the gut.

He was still smirking as she landed the blow - but his smirk vanished when the force knocked him backwards, not into open space, but into some invisible force.

There was a shimmer and suddenly a very small ship became visible, attached to the edge, its hatch open. Pitch had been knocked into the seat and restraints whipped out and wrapped around him, pulling him into it. He struggled to get out, clawing at them with his shadowy claws. Lal took out a remote from inside her uniform from a hiding place that could have only been inside her bra and pressed a button. The clear cockpit door began to close, but not fast enough for her liking. She grabbed the hatch and dragged it shut with her bodyweight. It slammed and vacuum sealed with a crash and a hiss.

“When they tapped me to come after you, I stopped by and visited the boys and girls in R & D. Apparently, they were putting this thing together for exploration beyond the Veil, in the emptiness outside the Golden Age Worlds. They made some tweaks before handing it over to me. We don’t know if you’ll stay dead. They figured you staying gone was the sure bet.”

“I’m not Koz - and what are you going to do? Shoot me outside the known universe?” Pitch said with a skeptical twitch of his lip.

“If you’re still in there, I’m so sorry, Koz,” Lal said mournfully.  

The cocky expression on Pitch’s face faded and now there was just a hateful one.   

“You can’t stop me. There will always be fear. And as soon as I’m gone, they’re going to go out of control.”

A shadow passed over Jack and he looked up, eyes going wide, at the mass of fearlings that were swarming towards the little ship he was trapped in.

“If you send me away, I won’t be here to control them,” he said of the fearlings swarming in towards her.”They’re going to tear you to shreds.”

Lal simply quirked an eyebrow. “They can try.”

She pressed the button on the controller without hesitation. The ship’s propulsion ignited and Jack was ripped away from the platform as it rocketed up into the air. He caught just one last glimpse of Captain Lal Jelias turning towards the hoard of shadows and raising her sword defiantly.

Then she was gone and so was the city and then the continent and then the world. The rocket pulled him along in its wake and he grabbed onto the outside of it, perching there in a way that wouldn’t have been humanly possible if this wasn’t just a memory. The ship left a trail of light in its wake; Jack could only marvel at it, at the feeling that he was perched atop a shooting star.

Not far from the besieged little planet - which had far fewer clouds of fearlings in  orbit around it than before and far more ships - the ship started to vibrate at a rate that was alarming, as if it was shaking apart, but then there was a ripping noise, something that should not have been, as it tore its way out of the reality that made up what Lal had called the Golden Age Worlds.

For a time, all Jack could see was nothing. It wasn’t black, it wasn’t white, it was a big, horrible, endless nothing. It was an un-color. It was unreality.

Inside the ship, over the roar of the engines, Pitch was laughing hysterically.

Then the ship started shaking again as if it was hitting turbulence, there was another rip, and Jack saw stars again.

Inside the ship, Pitch was still laughing.

The vision faded and he only got flashes now, images. Strange beings - outcasts that had found their way out of the edges of the Golden Age worlds like Pitch had - opening the ship only to find its contents attacking, taking over their strange, space-faring pirate ship. The moon moving towards Earth, parts of it smoking. Sandy’s shooting star arcing its way towards Earth.

Jack heard Pitch still laughing through all of it, but running underneath that, he could hear Kozmotis quietly weeping.

The memories finally faded and Jack found himself standing in a stone room, surrounded by gray walls that seemed that much more mundane compared to the sights he’d seen.

Jack now knew why he’d seen all this. He knew what the visions meant now. The maze showed people their fears or made up horrible things to make them afraid of. Jack had seen monsters, and empty rooms, and Jamie dead, and endless loneliness.

But his fears hadn’t been the only ones at play here. The vision of Sandy curb-stomping Pitch had proven that.

The reason Jack had seen these visions, had seen all these long-forgotten memories, was because Pitch was in the maze, and aside from being afraid of Sandy (for obvious reasons), he was also afraid of his past. Jack knew what it felt like to be born of nothing and all the curiosity it came with. Part of Pitch still had to wonder about where he’d come from. He had to wonder if he’d really been formed out of nothing and if so, why there’d been a locket in his hand. Maybe he’d even kept the locket after all this time - or at least until the thing had rusted into dust.

He had to still have those questions buried somewhere deep inside, but he was too afraid to look for the answers.

Pitch was likely somewhere else in the maze, but with his ability to travel the shadows and his mastery over fear, he’d probably been able to avoid facing the visions of the past he was afraid to confront, leaving Jack to wander into them instead.  

Now that this last vision had faded, Nightlight stood before Jack, looked him over once more, pity still  in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said to him, wondering how much of him was real, pulled from wherever his bright, little soul could have gone, and how much was just memory, just a vision of someone who’d died a very long time ago on a world far, far away. “I think I would’ve liked you. I think we could’ve been friends. And you’d have made a _great_ Guardian. And I know what it’s like, to have that moment where you’d - you’d do it all over again if you had to. You know you would, just to know that someday, maybe there’d be a chance she’d laugh again. But it’s still so scary to see it go dark. Inside your head. It’s not just in front of your eyes, it goes dark inside your head, too.”

Jack’s gaze went distant and it took him a moment to keep going. 

“It went dark inside my head and I knew - I knew I’d never be warm again. Even with getting a second chance, I was - I was still right. I’m sorry you had to feel that, too.”

When he looked back at Nightlight, Jack’s face was twisted into pity that probably matched Nightlight’s. “I’m sorry for what happened to you, but if you want me to have pity for him, I’m not going to. I’m not. He’s not owed it.”

Nightlight’s gaze went even softer, as if he felt sorry for Jack, as if he wished the pain he felt behind his anger was something he could just spirit away.

_“I just wanted someone to remember. Since he won’t.”_

Then he reached out towards Jack’s face. Jack winced instinctually, for nothing in the maze that’d reached out to him had been kind, but then froze in place. For just a moment, Jack could have sworn that he felt soft, warm fingers brush against his cheek, and he relished the touch. After going so long without it, it was the best comfort he could have gotten.  

_“I hope you get out of here, but if you don’t...I hope someone remembers you, too.”_

Then he faded and Jack was left alone with memories that weren’t his, feeling the misery of two dead children added to his own. He leaned against the nearest wall and slid down to the floor, bowed over. His tears froze and fell like sleet as he wept, and they gathered on a little pile on the stones in front of them, before they slowly melted away.  

Someone had to weep for them. Someone had to grieve for the loss of a little girl whose smile lit up the room like a sun and a boy whose laughter was like starlight.  

He just hoped that Nightlight was right and that someone would grieve for him, too. He was starting to feel that it was the best he could ask for.

Briefly, he heard a voice whisper in the dark, like he had before, the one that didn’t quite sound like the whispers of the fearlings..

**_it will end. it will all end._ **

For some reason, this time, it was a slight comfort.

But not much of one.

* * *

He wandered through no more memories, even though he wandered for a very long time. He came eventually to a room bare of anything  except no more than three floating lights.

There had been ten the last time, days ago - and perhaps two dozen the time before. Or had it been 20? It had been so long -

Jack stared at the three lights, and as he watched, one winked out. He gave a little cry of despair as it vanished, but the others hovered, unchanged. Except, perhaps, that the green one was looking a little fainter than before.

He stood, watching the lights, waiting to see them fade, trying to soak up the last of the color and light. The message was clear. There would be no more after these.

At some point in standing, he began chewing on his fingertip.

The green light had faded out by the time Jack had bloodied his finger. Only the gold one was left, low and softly guttering ats Jack ran his bloody finger across the wall.

 _789_.  

Jack tuned back to the golden light, burning softly. He knew he couldn’t stay here. He knew he couldn’t just stand here forever, soaking up the light.

The last light.

That thought made Jack’s heart clench up and for a moment; his knees went weak and he had to lean against the wall for support, looking down at the ugly little number smeared there. Without looking back to see if the light had gone out, Jack fixed the image in his head, pairing it up with the image of a little light twinkling on a globe, and that helped make it stick, even if it brought tears to his eyes.

Then he left the room, the door thundering shut behind him the moment he stepped out, and looked forward into the dark, knowing that he had seen the last beautiful thing he would ever see unless he escaped the maze. Since the latter was most likely not going to happen, that meant he’d seen the last beautiful thing he would ever see.

Yet he dragged one foot after the other, a near-dead boy living as the image of a dead one, dreaming of a day that he could be himself once more.

* * *

He was right about seeing nothing that was beautiful again. There were only dark things and endless gray walls as he wandered. After being chased one day by something that should not be, he lost the self-help book, smeared with the fingerprints of countless days, though he managed to hold on to the little wooden doll North had given him, even though the paint was now starting to be worn off by the constant rubbing of his fingers against it.

There were times he was reminded of when Old Man Winter put the shards of the Snow Queen’s mirror in his eyes, making his view of the world twisted and terrible, only now all of it was his reality rather than a twisted reflection of it. The maze dipped into his mind to create the most glorious nightmare-scapes it could and after he’d watched three hundred years of human history, it had plenty to draw from.

One door opened to a burnt city, full of children that should not have been, ones that were burned and dead and yet still living, clamoring after him to be hugged, to be touched. They tore their skeletal fingers into his flesh so that he couldn’t get away, so that he could rest with them, fleshless, forever embracing them, since they had been the ones forgotten and uncared for by the grownups with their bombs and tanks and endless rounds of gunfire.

Jack ran, weeping, as the air raid sirens went off, jogging memories of things he’d tried to forget, of guns, and gas, and machines, and the sound of thunder - and always, always, boys playing pretend at being men, lying in the mud crying out for their mothers. During those years he’d spent most of him time cowering in the peaceful emptiness of Antarctica while the rest of the world had gone mad, and only visited the places untouched by it.

And the children wept and ran after him, their cries wordless but filled with feeling that Jack understood.

They wanted to know why he’d hidden during all of those wars, while they’d burned and suffocated, while they’d been shot and crushed and poisoned. They wanted to know why all he’d brought the children of the world back then was snow days instead of the protection he’d been given a second life to give them.

Why had it taken three hundred years for him to try to protect them when he could have been doing it all along?

He had no answers for that. The few he could think of, such as “I was still figuring out who I was” and “I didn’t know how to fight something that big” sounded weak in his ears, especially when he knew most of the Guardians had been fighting desperately against the dark things that had flourished during those times, powered by death and hatred, and that Tooth had spent feverish days trying to remind the children that were surviving it all that there was still a tomorrow.

Why had he left them to die?

But eventually he escaped that nightmare and found himself in another, a place of endless darkness, where things he could not see buffeted against him in the dark, clawing at his skin and hair.    

Something was different this time, though, because far off, a tremendous distance away, he saw an open doorway with sunlight spilling out of it.

Maybe this was the end. Maybe after wandering through every horror the maze could think up, he’d finally found the way out.

Maybe he just had to get there.

That proved to be much more difficult in practice than it was in thought, however.

When he collapsed, short of the doorway, his hoodie had been ripped to ribbons. He bled from every inch of his skin.

And still they nipped at him, smaller bites and more tentative scratches now that he was not running, as if he were less interesting without motion. Every time he moved, they ripped at him again, so that the dark cavern was a slow stretch of flurried motion, screeches of bloodlust and moans of pain, then silence broken by soft weeping.

Jack drifted in and out of consciousness, strangely safe in his sleep, where motionlessness made him uninteresting - until he shifted in his sleep, and the frenzied screeching and scratching woke him and sent him crawling a space longer, before the pain made him slow, and weep, and sleep again.

The miles of the corridor passed slowly.

He only noticed he’d passed into the room of light when he found himself feeling curiously rested. He jolted awake, tearing open his wounds again, lying in a pool of light. Red eyes lined the darkness around the edge of the light, silent, blinking. Jack rolled to the side, and saw the source of light above him.

The moon hung full and unclouded, shedding light on the chamber. A circle cut out of the roof had given it ample space to travel across the sky, and it was slipping slowly towards the edge of the roof, soon to sink out of view. Jack had no idea how long it had already been traveling above him, looking down on him as he slept in its light, on a floor webbed with lace of his blood.

“Help.” His whisper was so soft he barely felt the breath pass his lips.

“Help me,” he begged, forcing strength into his words. “Please tell them where I am -”

And the moon spoke back.

_No._

His voice was just as Jack remembered, burned into his mind from three hundred years of desperately wishing to hear it again. The same silver voice, deep as space and as compassionate as it was old, and yet, telling him -

_No. I will not send them._

Jack lay, motionless, as the moon slipped closer to the edge.

Tears welled in his eyes, blurring the moon to a white smudge in his vision. “Why?”

_Jamie._

The tears slipped from Jack’s eyes. His heart felt as lacerated as his skin.

_He died seeking you._

Curiously, there was no anger in the moon’s voice. That only made it worse - the regret with which he spoke, words dragged out in his silvery voice as if he was so, so sad to say them - but could not possibly say anything else.

 _I won’t sacrifice anyone else on your account._ Grief for Jamie brimmed over in the moon’s voice, as much as in Jack’s heart.

The moon paused, the silence filled with regret and resolve.

_This is my mistake. Was my mistake. I never should have made Jack Frost. I should have seen past the boy who sacrificed himself for a child, to the boy who’d get children hurt to draw attention to himself -_

“No,” Jack choked out, the softest wail in his voice. “No - that isn’t me, that isn’t why I -”

That wasn’t why he’d caused so many little accidents, nipped so many noses, slipped Jamie into the street to narrowly avoid being hit by cars, crashing into a statue -

 _I take full responsibility,_ spoke the moon, bitter. _I chose with poor judgement. I thought I chose a selfless hero. I thought  -_

Manny trailed off.

_I’m still sorry for you, Jackson Overland. You were only a foolish child, even after all those years. You didn’t deserve to come to this. I - I brought this on you. Even if I didn’t know it would come to pass._

The moon touched the edge of the roof, and a sliver of darkness began to eclipse the pool of light.

_I never should have saved you. I’m sorry I didn’t let you die when you had the chance to die peacefully._

The moon fell silent, and stayed that way.

Jack cried, weak, and struggling, as the moon silently slipped out of view, taking the light with it. It was a long, long time before the last of the light slipped away - but none of Jack’s cries received an answer.

And when the last of the light was gone, the creatures came again and this time, they didn’t care how long or how quietly Jack lay still.

* * *

The light at the end of the tunnel was a lie, but then it always was.

Days passed before Jack escaped the realm of the screeching, clawing creatures, and days  more passed before he was well enough to stand and walk the maze again.

He paused in a room with a shape on the wall that made him stop, frowning, narrowing his eyes as the meaning of the shape eluded him. Eventually, the meaning for it surfaced in his mind - a number 2, written on the wall in aged, browned blood.

His blood.

His 2.

He broke like a shard of flint. He didn’t feel his knees collapse out from under him; he only felt the cool of the floor against his cheek after he’d fallen hard on it. The pain from his skull bouncing off the stone rattled in his head.

There was no more reason to walk on. There was nowhere new to find. Only old terrors to revisit. Only room after room where he was still lost and Jamie was still dead. Room after room where no one was looking for him. Room after room where the moon was waiting for him to die.

He need not go to those rooms, when he could simply lie in this one and wait to die instead.

Someday the children would stop believing. Someday he could rest. Until then -

He lay until he couldn’t feel it anymore. Then he stayed there, laying where he had fallen.

He was melting into the cold dankness of the maze. The maze was despair incarnate. It had sunk its despair into the marrow of his bones, ran it cold through every vein. It froze his cold heart even colder. It ripped away the lightness, the fun, the parts of him that had been Jack Frost, and replaced them all with misery.

He lay there and only moved occasionally, trying for some measure of comfort, but eventually gave up on that. He was too cold, too sad. There would never be any comfort for him other than the eventual slip he made into a darkness he’d already seen once before.

As he lay there, sometimes weeping, sometimes laughing deliriously, he forgot what it felt like to be hugged, to know the touch of another living being.The face of his sister left him and he forgot the sound of his mother’s voice. He forgot the laughter of children and the feeling of sunlight on his face.

In the end, there was dust and silence, inside and outside.

It was this way for a very, very long time before he finally heard a sound, distorted by his now unreliable senses.

When he felt hands helping to sit him upright, he realized what that sound must have been - footsteps. Someone brushed a hand against his dust-covered face and he choked, leaning instinctively into the touch.

Strong arms lifted him up. He tried to speak but he found he’d forgotten how. He could only force air between his lips in a strange wheeze that was not quite a sob.   

“Sssh. It’s alright. You’re safe now.”

The maze melted away as he was carried through it and eventually he saw an open sky open up above him. The moon wasn’t out but the stars shone bright, far up above him.  

The beauty of them dealt a blow to his heart that he reacted to almost bodily, convulsively shaking, weeping until the sight of them was blurred.

“It’s all over. I won’t let the maze hurt you anymore.”

His rescuer knelt, setting him down on the stone, but still holding him close, rocking him just slightly as he lay there limply. After what felt like an eternity, he felt a hand at his chin, tilting his face so that he was looking right up into Pitch's yellow eyes.

“You should have listened to me when I warned you that the Guardians would abandon you. I was just trying to spare you the pain of all this,” said Pitch. “I hoped you would accept it on your own, but you hung on for so long -”

Pitch let out a sigh that sunk beneath Jack.

“But I have to admit, I admire that about you, Jack -” he said, looking at the stars as if lost in a distant, beloved memory. “You are genuine.” He paused. “Foolish - naive - but _so_ genuine. I told you that I could be a father to you. I didn’t tell you, truly, what an honor that would be - and wouldn’t it be better than being trapped alone in the dark, all because they simply can’t be bothered to come for you? My dear boy - my dear, brave boy - if you choose to stay at my side, I swear that I won’t leave you alone.”  

When Jack said nothing, just blinked into that yellow gaze, Pitch went on, “I tried to find you, Jack. I didn’t realize -” he gritted his teeth, regretful. ”The maze was harder to control than I thought it would be. It....got you away from me. Otherwise I would have come to you sooner -” he brushed a finger, light as a moth’s wings, along Jack’s forehead, pushing his hair back. “Before it reduced you to this.”

He shook his head. “But don’t worry - I will make it right. I will make it all better. If you stay at my side, I can keep you safe. I can make sure you never fall into the maze again.”

He wrapped his hands around Jack’s arms, as if some force might attempt to pluck him away.

“What do you say, Jack?” Pitch pressed. “I can protect you. I can keep you by my side. Doesn’t that sound nice? After all...you don't want to be alone again - do you?”

A moment of silence hung between them, like a dewdrop on a spiders’ web.

A tremor ran through Jack’s body and he tightened his fingers around Pitch’s arms, echoing the nightmare king’s grip on him. The sobs tore out of him, plaintive and weak at first, then loud, racking, painful, as contact with another person gave him the strength to respond to his own agony. Pitch dug his fingers in, deep enough to hurt, but all the pain did was reassure Jack that someone else was there.

Jack clung to Pitch and sobbed as his old fears fell away, like dead scales - as fears that have already come to pass do, when in coming to pass, they cease to be frightening.

A new fear settled over him - that Pitch, like all the others, might break his promise, and leave him alone again.

In the arms of the Nightmare King, fear consumed him.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: This fic is undoubtedly the darkest in the series and this is one of the the chapters that makes it that way. It will contain quite a few dark themes, involving physical/psychological abuse, gaslighting, Stockholm’s syndrome, isolation/loneliness, mental illness, and psychological mind-borkery. It’s definitely not for the faint of heart, so if you find those things to be triggering, you may not want to read this chapter. The portrayal of all this will be very realistic and accurate as one of the co-authors grew up in a home with domestic violence and child abuse, so it’ll be pretty intense. If you’d like a summary of what happens so you can continue reading without having to read this chapter, just skip to the bottom and leave a review asking for itand we can give a less intense barebones summary.
> 
> Also, there are spiders.

“ _Off_ the furniture.”

Pitch’s tone was enough to send Jack scuttling away from the chair.

“I wasn’t sitting. I was just -”

“Leaning?” Pitch guessed, with a dangerous hint of acid.

“Sorry.” Jack hung his head, bowed so low it was almost touching the ground in front of him. “I’m sorry.”

Pitch let out a long sigh. “Jack, we’ve talked about this. I would love for you to be comfortable - you know all I want is your happiness - but you’ve been so badly behaved lately. Self-discipline is very important. If being uncomfortable is what it takes to teach you _control -_ then it’s your choice, whether you want to be comfortable, or badly behaved.”

Pitch’s realm in the maze had been sectioned off and warped by his power into a shadowy paradise. He had a massive throne room, with a globe just like his usual lair, and a big, black chair that was almost like a throne.

That was where he sat down now.

That was where Jack wasn’t allowed to sit. He had his own chair but right now he wasn’t allowed to sit there either, just like he wasn’t allowed to lie or sleep in his massive, gloomy bed, because he had been Bad. Capital B. When he was Bad, he wasn’t allowed to have nice things because he was making it so Pitch couldn’t have nice things - like him behaving.

What he’d done that was Bad was ask questions. Pitch didn’t like certain questions. They made him annoyed and sometimes even very angry.

The tricky bit was figuring out which ones would set him off before Jack asked them and he hadn’t mastered that yet.

There was the option of not asking any questions at all but being shut in for so long had made him desperate for even the smallest whiff of news that he’d be let out - or that Pitch would at least take him to somewhere in the maze that he could see the sky again. The last time he’d been very good, he’d gotten a whole ten minutes of sunlight beaming down through a small crack. Jack still wasn’t sure if it’d been real sunlight, but it was close enough.  

He had to be Good. If he was Good, he got to see the sky.

As Jack sat on the floor, head hanging, Pitch’s expression softened, changing from irritation to that of a loving and indulgent parent.

“Come here, Jack.”

Jack scrambled over next to Pitch’s chair, sitting down on the cold stone next to him. The light touch of Pitch’s thin fingers in his hair grounded him - the rhythm of the contact reassuring him that he was not alone, not in the maze, hadn’t been thrown back in there. He clung to the hope that if he managed to behave well enough, Pitch never would throw him back in.

“What are you thinking about, Jack?”

Jack ran through viable answers - if he spoke the truth, then he’d have to talk about the maze. If he mentioned Jamie, dead in the maze, he’d have to talk about Jamie _and_ the maze.

He settled for “Just - I like -” he bit his words off. “Being here. When you - when we can just...sit. Like this.”

Pitch’s sharp-toothed smile oozed. “I find that hard to believe, sometimes, when you are so contrary.”

“I do,” Jack insisted.

“Tell me why you don’t want to leave.”

Jack paused again, hissing slightly when Pitch’s fingers tightened around his hair, tugging. “Jack, I asked you a question.”

“Because I don’t want to go back to the maze,” Jack blurted, his voice soft, but fast. The tension on his hair lessened.

“Why else?”

“Because -” he sucked in a breath, trembling. “Because no one out there’s looking for me.”

“That’s right. The Guardians didn’t think you were worth the effort. They gave up so easily. But I would never give up on trying to have you at my side. They didn't think you were worth their lives. But I think you're worth _all_ the lives in the world."

Tears welled in Jack’s eyes. He blinked them away and leaned into Pitch’s touch, huddled in on himself.

“Tell me why you don’t want to go back to the maze,” Pitch broke in.

Jack hesitated. He never knew what the right answer was. “Because then I wouldn’t be here?” he suggested.

Pitch chuckled darkly. “My boy, I know _that._ Tell me why you didn’t enjoy being in the maze in the first place. Tell me why, so I know why I should try to keep you out of it. What scared you most?”

There was a hunger in his smile, his voice, his eyes, though his fingers still swept calmly through Jack’s hair.

Jack desperately cast about for something to say, something that Pitch would be happy with, but also didn’t want to dig too deep. It hurt.

“The hands. There were...hands. Stitched together. With eyes. They tried to strangle me. One morning I just woke up and...and I couldn’t breathe.”

Pitch’s grip tightened in Jack’s hair, and it let Jack know it wasn’t enough. “What else?”

“The ground wasn’t always...ground,” Jack said slowly, and trailed off into silence.

“You have to tell me them all. The maze might get you again, without my help, if these little fears still hold sway over you. There are _much_ worse ones you should be worrying about.”  

It was almost like he was admiring another master’s work. He was very, very old, if the visions Jack had seen of him fighting Sandy in a very quiet world were any indication. It was almost as if he was using Jack to see the world with new eyes, but rather than seeing the joy in it, what he wanted to marvel over were the terrors still in it.

He was living vicariously through Jack in a way that felt to Jack like dying.

“You haven’t even gotten to the worst of it. What was the worst of it, Jack?”

“Jamie,” Jack finally said, his voice momentarily breathless because of the sob that didn’t come.. “When he was in there. When I thought I’d have to protect him - find some way to feed him, keep him safe, and I didn’t know how -”

“Ah yes, the child - ah, but that fear was so short-lived,” Pitch said, almost as if he was lamenting how quick Jamie’s death had come. “And it wasn’t even the maze that brought it on.” He was almost gleeful. “How _beautifully_ ironic, isn’t it, Jack? That the Guardians who claim to protect children lead one to a death more horrifying than any I would have wasted on a nobody of a boy -” His mirth built into a chuckle. “Remember, I did tell you once, I’d let you still have your fun with the children if you took to my side. Things certainly would have turned out better for little Jamie if you’d listened to me then, wouldn’t they?”

He laughed, a light, small laugh, as if Jack had made a mildly amusing flub.

“Yes,” Jack said in a tremulous voice, starting to shake. “That’s - that was my fault.”

“But it will be better in the future. You can occasionally let them have their fun, Jack. They’ll need the occasional reprieve from the fear we bring them.”

“Fear - the fear we bring them,” Jack said slowly, wide eyes staring at the floor. 

“You and I, we’re going to remake this world into one where we get the respect we deserve. Where we get the belief we deserve. Cold and dark, cast over the world forever - and you’ll always get to be there by my side. Won’t that be nice? We-”

Pitch stopped himself, self-correcting.

“You’ll never be alone again.”

“Cold and dark,” said Jack, still slowly, still staring at the floor. “That’s - that’s what the kids will have to live with. Cold and dark.”

“And you can be the one that gives them occasional relief, Jack. You’ll be the only one. They’ll _adore_ you for it.”

“I can be the one -” Jack said breathlessly. “That’s all they’ll get. Just me.” He briefly looked up at Pitch, expression questioning. “Just me?”

Pitch smiled at his expression, at the wonder he was finally happy to see there. 

“Just you, Jack.”

Jack’s face twitched just slightly and then his eyes were a little clearer. “I’ll get to see the kids again?”

“When you’re ready,” Pitch confirmed, with a noncommittal shrug.

“I’m ready now,” Jack said.

Pitch cut him off. “When I _say_ you’re ready.”

“I’ll be good,” Jack said. He added slowly, staring up at Pitch with with a fixed gaze, “I’ll be ready.”

“Of course you will,” said Pitch with a shark-like smile, “and the Guardians will never see it coming.”  

* * *

Jack was sometimes left alone in Pitch’s lair. He hated those times, hated not knowing if he was coming back or if he’d be trapped alone there forever. He never really knew where he went. Maybe he was out antagonizing the Guardians, maybe he was spreading his nightmares in the empty spaces where Jack’s fun used to be. 

Sometimes, though, Pitch disappeared and Jack found him somewhere else in the lair. One day Jack woke up from a catnap - jarred awake by nightmares, naturally - to find Pitch gone. For a good while, he stayed in his little throne room, waiting for him to come back, and then curiosity overtook him. It was during the times he was alone that he was able to prod and pry to find the boundaries of the place. There were small interesting things that he almost wanted to touch, trinkets and such, but he’d long since learned his lesson from the maze. So he looked and didn’t touch.

It was as he cautiously crept through the halls that he heard the whispering.

It was the voice again, the one from the maze. The one that he was fairly sure wasn’t the fearlings. The one that told him it would all end but said it in a way that he wasn’t sure was supposed to be ominous.

**_this must end. there is no justification._ **

“I don’t care about justification. The is _my_ realm. He _will_ be my Prince of Nightmares.”

It wasn’t talking to him this time, apparently. Jack peered around the corner and saw the open door to Pitch’s room. He was so flustered he hadn’t thought to close it and right now he was taking something out of the nebulous dark space inside his robes and shoving it in a little box. Jack caught a flash of gold.

“There. I’d like to see you try talking to me now.”  

Silence. All that was left was silence and Pitch grinned a smug grin, tucked the little box away in a cabinet next to his bed, and sauntered out of the room. Jack pressed himself against the wall, hoping desperately that Pitch wouldn’t come his way while leaving and realize he was prying but fortunately he chose to go down the other hall.

He should walk away. He knew he should just walk away. This wasn’t his business and sticking his nose in it would only lead to trouble and yet more pain.

Yet Jack still found himself drawn in the direction of Pitch’s room.

The door wasn’t locked but then Pitch had seemed somewhat flustered as he’d left so maybe he just forgot to. Jack looked around in every direction to make sure Pitch was nowhere nearby, then open the door quietly and carefully, tiptoeing into the room.

He was going to get in trouble. He was going to get in so much trouble if he was caught, maybe even enough to get thrown in the maze again.

But he had to know if that flash of gold was what he thought it was. 

The room was about as strange as could be expected for one belonging to someone like Pitch. It was clear that he rarely spent time there and that made sense given myths rarely needed to sleep. That was why, if Pitch was trying to avoid something, it was a good place to put whatever he wanted to avoid. The bed was a massive four poster bed with a canopy that looked like it was made of black cobwebs, and the the sheets were black, the blanket was black, the pillows were black...

 _I’m sensing a recurring theme here_ , Jack thought to himself, though he’d never dare to voice the words aloud.

A few pictures rested crookedly on the walls and they made Jack’s eyebrows raise nearly all the way to his hairline. Apparently Pitch had a penchant for portraits of sad clowns. Now Jack couldn’t help but speak aloud.

“Oh- _kay_.”

He didn’t have time to admire Pitch’s sad skills in interior decorating though, so he went for the little cabinet and carefully opened it up, half expecting something horrible to pop out as he did it. Fortunately, it wasn’t booby-trapped in any way. The little black box rested inside and Jack took it out.

It was intricate and made of metal. It stymied his attempts at opening it by force and that was when Jack realized it was a puzzle box.

Jack’s relationship with puzzles had changed after entering the maze. First, there’d been the moon puzzlebox that had gotten him stuck here in the first place, and then in the maze itself, there’d been the odd puzzle just to inspire terror.

One of the most horrifying things to come across while running from something trying to shred you with its teeth was a door that only opened if you hit the floor panels in front of it in the right order, as instructed by a half completed mural on the wall.

It was a trick the maze had pulled more than once, in multiple variations.

Between that experience and the fact that he was fairly clever to begin with, Jack fiddled with the box until he twisted just the right little spires to make it snap open. Inside, glinting gold despite the dim light, was a locket. Rashena’s locket. Eyes wide, Jack reached inside the box and lifted it out with gentle fingers, treating it as a precious thing.

How had it survived all this time? Even made of gold as it was, to stay intact across universes, across centuries - possibly millennia? Maybe the gold could have lasted that long but for it to stay intact, pristine, exactly the way it had been in the visions of the past he saw? That seemed impossible. Impossible wasn’t always a bad thing, though. It was when something you needed was impossible, like leaving the maze, but it wasn’t always. This was one impossible thing Jack was glad to see.

He sat down heavily on the floor and started trying to pry it open with his fingers.

It was impossible to get it open, making it an impossible thing Jack _didn’t_ want to see.

“C’mon, c’mooon,” Jack whispered to himself as he tried to dig in his nails in the crack in the locket.

Was it charmed somehow, so that only its owner could open it?

Jack grunted as he exerted himself, prying at the locket - whether it was charmed or not, he didn’t get to find out. He’d made too much noise.

The blow as Pitch hit him sent Jack flying across the room. When Jack landed, the back of his head burning, his body burning when he’d struck the wall, he saw Pitch towering in the doorway, his scythe held out. He had to have hit Jack with the flat of the blade. The Nightmare King’s eyes burned with the fury of a dying sun.

“If you _want_ to go into the maze again,” Pitch said, his voice oily, dripping with anger. “All you had to do was _ask,_ you stupid child.”

“I wasn’t - I wasn’t trying to -” Jack gasped, terrified, crawling closer to the wall, pressing himself against it, but Pitch didn’t give him a chance to talk. He swept forward, wrapped his long fingers around Jack’s throat, and slammed him up against the wall again, choking him. Jack’s head was ringing now, a high-pitched noise in his ears drowning out all other sound.  

“Gck. Gfft.”

“How _dare_ you intrude on my private effects?” Pitch hissed, as he squeezed Jack’s neck, halting his blood and dampening his voice. “What made you think you had even the _slightest_ right?”

Jack hung, unable to talk, unable to respond. If he could have talked, he might have pointed out how much Pitch intruded on his own life as a defense. Of course, the only reason he would have dared to say something that stupid was the lack of blood flow to his brain.

Pitch only held him against the wall, staring into Jack’s eyes as the ringing filled his ears. Pitch watched impassively as Jack writhed, only dropping him when pain had blocked Jack’s senses entirely.

“Well?” he pushed, as Jack coughed and wheezed. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I -” For a moment could say nothing because he was too busy coughing and trying to get air back into his lungs.

Apparently, Pitch didn’t really intend for Jack to have a say for himself.

“You’re lucky I know you’ve hardly had a father before,” he hissed, kneeling down to grab Jack’s head, his fingers tight in Jack’s hair. He held Jack’s head against the floor, slamming it back down as Jack tried to rise.

“If you’d had one, you would have known better, and I would have known you knew better. I ought to have used the blade on you, in that case,” he hissed, holding the scythe in front of Jack’s eyes, so that Jack could see the razor edge of the oily-patterned weapon. “So let me make this perfectly clear to you, _my boy._ I said I would be like a father to you. Sons _obey_ their fathers.”

“I’ll be good,” Jack gasped, tears streaming down his face. “I’ll be good. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, please don’t send me back. I just wanted to see something new. Everything’s dark here and it was bright and I just - I just wanted to see something new, but I’ll be good. I’ll be patient. You said you’d let me out someday and I believe you, I - I _trust_ you.”

Jack sucked in a deep, shaking breath amidst his sobs. “I know you’re the _only_ one I can trust.”

A voice rang out under Jack’s, still even and composed, but tense with a certainty that did not bear argument.

**_this is unjust._ **

Jack froze but opted to not react to the voice, continuing to stare up at Pitch instead. What might Pitch think if he knew he could also hear the voice? It seemed like something intimate, something he might decide was “intrusive,” too, despite Jack not having control over it.

“Please,” he croaked, trying to make it seem as if he hadn’t heard it, as Pitch also froze in reaction to the voice. “I don’t want to go to the maze. I want to be good. I will be _so_ good. You won’t even notice I’m here, not unless you want to.”

Pitch didn’t move, or speak, but Jack could feel a slight tremor in his hand, as if the Nightmare King desperately wanted to react to the voice - but didn’t want to admit it was there.

Jack’s gamble paid off. Pitch stood up, holding his scythe, leaving Jack lying on the ground.

“Very well. I accept your apology. You may stand up now.”

 _So gracious,_ Jack thought, as sarcastically as he could think. He stood, his neck still aching, head still ringing.

“But if I find you in here again...” Pitch said, in a warning tone.

Jack nodded so hard it made his head ache even more.

“It’s your own fault, you know,” said Pitch. “For making me this angry. This wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t invaded my privacy.”

“I won’t do it again,” Jack promised.

“Good,” Pitch snapped. “Because I don’t like punishing you any more than I like having my privacy disrupted.”

“I don’t like it either,” Jack insisted, rubbing his neck.

“But I said it myself,” Pitch sighed. “You make a mess wherever you go. Even to the one person willing to overturn the Earth for you.”

“I know,” Jack said, staring straight ahead, not meeting Pitch’s eyes. “It’s my fault for making you mad. You’re so good to me.”

Pitch softened a little, relaxing the arm that held the scythe. “I’m glad we agree,” he said. He seemed appeased. “There may be hope for you after all, Jack.

Jack paused. “Thank you.”

“Now get out.”

Jack didn’t have to be asked twice. He ran out of the room as if the monsters in the maze were at his tail, meek and terrified, moving through the winding hallways of Pitch’s lair as quickly as he could until he reached one of the spaces he knew he was allowed in, the throne room. Pitch didn’t follow him. Still wide-eyed, his lip trembling, he looked down the hallway to be absolutely sure, then sat up against Pitch’s chair, rubbing his neck. 

If Pitch had been there, he would’ve seen the terrified expression on his face melt away. Jack’s eyes narrowed and he clenched his hands as if around the staff he no longer had.

* * *

 

“So, I bet there’s not a kid alive that ever thought ‘You know what I think the Nightmare King does in his spare time? Needlework.’ No kid has ever thought that.” 

“Then they should stretch their imaginations a little,” said Pitch, stretching the black thread that he was pulling through black silk as if it were a child’s imagination. The stitch tugged properly into place. It was not a hobby Jack expected of the Nightmare King either. But Pitch,in his quiet hours, seemed to enjoy it. Why not? Technically it did involve stabbing.

Pitch also enjoyed having Jack keep him company as he worked.

Which was usually pretty dull for Jack, sitting by the throne, on the floor, listening to Pitch monologue as he sewed, or -

“I want to ask you something, Jack.”

Or having to tell stories. Jack gulped.

“What do you want to ask?” Jack asked.

“I want you to tell me something personal.” Pitch’s smile bared the sharp edges of his broken teeth, as he set his needlework aside. “I want you to tell me how you became Jack Frost.”

Something in Jack’s cold, sad heart melted at the memory of his sister’s face, as if under a warm rain.

“I had a sister,” he said, dreamlike for a moment, before his mind caught up with his tongue. His love for his sister wouldn’t have interested Pitch. Pitch’s interests would lie in other facets of his mortal life. “We lived by the pond. We were poor, and we were hungry a lot -”

“And did that poverty and that hunger ever make you afraid?” Pitch pushed.

Jack thought, and answered honestly, “No.”

Pitch’s narrow, sideways glance said he didn’t believe Jack.

“No,” Jack repeated, “Not - not much. I mean sometimes, yes, I was afraid for her - or for mom - but we had each other and that was -”

He paused, digging deep. Once upon a time, he’d played with his sister. Once upon a time, his mother had sung him to sleep by a fire. Once, countless ages before this. When there was no Pitch to run his fingers through Jack’s hair.

“That was stronger than the fear,” he murmured, before he could rephrase his thoughts.

The fingers in his hair tightened, nails scratching his scalp and tearing hairs free as Pitch jerked his head back.

“Get to the good parts.”

His voice was as calm as a frozen lake as Jack reached instinctively for the pain in his scalp. Pitch revoked his hand, sitting in his chair and watching as Jack let out a shuddering sigh. _The good parts._

“When I became Jack Frost,” he said, “It was winter, but - but it was a warm winter. The ice on the pond wasn’t as thick as it usually was that time of year, but we didn’t know - we wanted to go ice skating.”

Understanding dawned on Pitch’s face - his smile grew like an unsheathed claw. “Go on.”

“The ice cracked under her,” Jack continued. “She was too afraid to move, but if she stayed, she was going to fall in -”

“Caught between terror and death,” Pitch murmured, as if he were dissecting a fine wine. “If a shiver could go up my spine, Jack, it surely would. Tell me more.”

His fanged smile was the only thing that gleamed in the dark chamber of the maze.

Jack had to pause, caught in the memory of his sister’s expression, looking at him as she had with such desperation. “She - I knew I had to keep her happy,” he said, “Keep her laughing so I told her - I told her we were going to have a little fun.”

“Fun?” Pitch scoffed. “In the face of death? And did she believe that lie, Jack?”

“It wasn’t a lie.” Jack didn’t snap. He knew better than to snap at Pitch, who’d only snap back, harder. “We did have fun - I told her we were going to play hopscotch, I made her laugh, and I - I grabbed a branch, and pushed her off the thin ice. I saved her.” He looked at his hands, as if lost suddenly in the blue veins spider-webbing his palms. “I saved her.”

“How sweet,” Pitch oozed, rolling his eyes. “I know there’s more. Isn’t there, my boy? One does not become as powerful as you and I with _sweetness.”_

“I fell through the ice,” Jack said. “I pushed her off the thin ice, but pushed myself on, and I fell through.” He shrugged. “And I...I died. The Moon saved me.”

“Saved you?” Pitch almost barked with laughter. “Saved what, your life? Jack, the blood in your veins is as cold as a corpse. What exactly did the Moon save?”

“Me,” Jack insisted, faltering suddenly. His blood was cold, but his heart pumped it through his veins. “My - my self, the part of me that saved my sister -”

“Tell me how it felt,” Pitch interrupted, twisting in his chair to touch Jack’s chin. The touch was gentle, until Jack didn’t move - then Pitch forced his face upwards, until Jack was looking into the eclipses of Pitch’s yellowed grey eyes. “Tell me, Jack, every moment from the first crack of the ice under your feet, till the moment the Moon preserved you. Tell me how the fear grew.” There was a hunger in Pitch’s eyes, one Jack had seen before, growing as he clenched Jack’s jaw in his hands. “How the cold of the water shocked you. Tell me if her screams followed you into death. This is what I want, Jack. Give it to me.”

“I -”

All Jack could remember, for the moment, was the happiness that had welled up inside him when his little sister smiled, safe and sound.

He closed his eyes, struggled to remember the parts that hadn’t brought him joy. Pitch squeezed his chin until Jack opened his eyes, looking at the Nightmare King again.

“I felt the ice shift - I heard it cracking and my stomach clenched like...like it was on fire,” he said. A shadow of the same stomach-clenching fear swept over him as he struggled to remember. “The water was so cold it - so cold it burned, like it was eating my skin away.” He stopped, his voice breaking. Cold had not burned him in 300 years. Cold had not made his skin feel cracked and fractured in his waking memory - cold had been his companion, his comfort, the colder the better, without the memory of how it had once extinguished the life in him, but now - remembering it -

He shuddered, broke into a little sob. When he closed his eyes, squeezing the tears free, Pitch grabbed his face with both hands. “Look at me, Jack. Look at me as you remember that,” the Nightmare King hissed. “Don’t you dare deny me this.”

Tears rolled down Jack’s face as Pitch’s fingers dug into his neck and face. “I - I was afraid,” he said. “I don’t know - what else do you want? I - I was afraid because I knew I was dying, I was afraid because there was - there was nothing solid beneath me, and I was falling, and it was so cold, and her scream - “

“What?” Pitch’s voice was suddenly soft, soft as a cold breath on a winter’s morning. “What about her screams, Jack?”

“She screamed,” Jack said, the tears pouring now steadily, “Like she’d never be happy again -”

Pitch sighed with delight.

“She must have never dared to walk on ice again,” he murmured, savoring her imagined fear. “She must have felt sick when she so much as took a bath.”

He released Jack’s face, sitting back in his chair, tapping his fingers on the armrests slowly. “I had no idea your background was so - artful, Jack,” he said, pleasure in his voice, as if he had just consumed a satisfying meal, or taken in a particularly elegant art film. “The death of a younger sibling, the sacrifice of an elder - I tormented many a set with that very same story, but I never thought I’d have the pleasure of hearing it from one who lived it and died it -” he chuckled. “If only your dear sister were not dust in a box right now,” he lamented. “The only thing more moving than your side of the story would be to hear just how little pleasure she found in the life you died to give her.”

Jack’s silent tears rolled, and, softly, he began to sob. As Pitch sat back, the small smile playing on his face, Jack’s sobs intensified, and Pitch sat back, indulging in the moment.

He let Jack cry. Images floated through Jack’s mind, of every sad person he’d ever seen over the years, mired down with sorrow or loneliness, all wearing his sister’s face. Maybe Manny had taken his memories because his sister had never been happy afterwards. Maybe Manny had been sparing him the awful realization that his sister had never been able to live _because_ he’d died for her.

Pitch stretched in his chair. “Thank you, Jack, that was an exquisite tale.”

He stood, still stretching, and held his hand out to the boy on the ground. “A gift deserves a reward, don’t you think? You wanted to see something new. Come with me, my boy.”

Jack knew better than to ask if he had to.

As he followed Pitch through the part of the maze the Nightmare King had tamed, wondering where they were going. Pitch lead him through an archway and into a space wider, more open, than any Jack had seen before - he looked up to see if the roof of the maze was open, and saw stars peeking through a lattice overgrown with dead vines. The vines were lifeless, but the rest of the room was not. Flowers grew in rows, pale lilies lifting their faces to the stars, and broad-leaved bushes hedged the walls, deep purple spear like blooms just opening at the tips to show pale blue petals.

The garden was quiet, but charged with a sense of the living, as no other room in the maze had been. Jack forgot his tears for a moment, seeing only the flowers, smelling the scent of rich earth and growing things. It had been so long since he’d smelled it, he had to remind himself that was what it was.

He started to take a step into the garden, then remembered to look at Pitch for permission. The Nightmare King nodded once, and Jack trotted into the garden, filling his eyes with the color and the soft shapes of petals, leaves, dirt on the ground. The soil was soft beneath his toes. Each flower he visited was more fragrant than the last. He willed himself to be lost in the sensation, forgetting for a moment the possibility that his sister had died on the ice after all.

He dropped to his knees by a bush of blooms that were pale yellow, patterned with a lurid purple. The flowers had an organic look to them that was not entirely pleasant, like the look of veins on the inner surface of skin, but to Jack, the colors at all were overwhelming in that they were _there._ They were bright, they existed - he hadn’t imagined them, added them to his memories to make the world before the maze seem better than it had been.

As he lost himself in the petals, a pale shape skittered over the surface of the bloom. For a moment, the eight-legged silhouette ignited a burst of recognition and longing in Jack’s brain that was nearly painful. He suppressed a cry at the sight of the spider.

But it was not a spider he knew. It was pale, a translucent white, with a red mark on its back like a bloodstain. The red faded into pink, giving the spider an infected look. Its red eyes sat atop its pale head like drops of blood.

It seemed to stare at Jack, and as he stared back, suddenly another spider was beside it, and another, and another, their pale bodies weighing down the flowers.

An itch on his hand drew his eye downward. More of the pale spiders skittered across the dirt, two of them already climbing up his arm. More massed in the dirt around him, like little moving wounds. Jack yelled and jumped, running and flinging spiders back into the foliage.

He ran towards Pitch, and the Nightmare King opened his arms to catch Jack. “What’s the matter now?”

Jack kept brushing his hands, his arms, knowing that nothing was on him, but unable to shake the creepy, crawling feel of their legs. “Spiders - in the bushes - some got on me -”

Pitch folded his arms around Jack. “There there, Jack.” He chuckled as Jack trembled. It wasn’t a moment before Pitch had taken Jack’s chin again, and tilted his face up for Pitch to see.

“A little thing like spiders? When they can't even kill you anymore?” The same hungry look was back in Pitch’s eyes. “Oh my dear boy, you are simply _too_ precious."

Jack stopped trembling, and his breath hitched in his throat.

 _A little thing like spiders?_ When Pitch had already taken his most personal moment of fear _and_ happiness and had stripped the joy from it, the love, leaving only the horror?

There could be no fear more decadent than that. But still, Pitch gripped his chin, staring into his eyes with a greedy hunger. "I'd forgotten what the fear of a little insect was like..."

Jack understood. It wasn’t about the quality of his fear. It was the quantity. There was not a point at which Pitch would ever have enough.

His breath came in a sob, and his fears flowed. Pitch’s smile deepened.

“What do you fear now, Jack?”

The spiders.

The maze.

The eternity before him, with the only person who spoke to him, who ever touched him gently, twisting his every memory into fear that never stopped gnawing.

An eternity with a companion who loved nothing more than to watch him suffer.

What _didn’t_ Jack fear anymore?

* * *

“Jack. What. Is. _This_?" 

Jack shrugged his shoulders, twisting a little in the corner where he’d curled up. Curling up in a corner was something he did a lot, lately - it was one of the few things he never got in trouble for doing. “What is what?”

“Look at me when I talk to you, boy.”

Jack rolled over and, slowly, rose to his knees. He looked up at Pitch through his lank, dirty hair. Dust had settled on him where he lay on the ground. He must have been there for a while - Pitch must have been out, then, for a while, terrorizing some part of the outside world.

When Jack looked at Pitch, the Nightmare King was holding something out to him, something bright blue and small enough to fit in the palm of Jack’s hand.

Jack barely reacted, a hand going to his pocket where the nesting doll had sat ever since North gave it to him. But the movement was casual, as if he was checking to see if he had a hole there.

Jack shrugged. “Forgot I had that. Must’ve fallen out a while ago. I haven’t even...hadn’t thought to check.”

Pitch clenched his long fingers around the nesting doll, narrowing his eyes at Jack’s lukewarm response. “Well then I suppose you won’t mind that I dispose of it.”

Jack shrugged. “Nah.” His eyes were unfocused, half-lidded. He leaned against the wall, as though he were tired. “Am I in trouble for having that?”

There were so many things for him to be in trouble for, lately he’d begun to ask if he was in trouble, just so that he’d know when Pitch’s anger was coming.

But Pitch lowered the doll, his angry expression clearing as Jack made no objection to the loss of the toy. He looked at it, reconsidering. “Then again - I suppose it’s really yours to dispose of, isn’t it, Jack?”

He threw North’s nesting doll back to Jack, who cringed at the sudden movement and shrank away. But the underhand toss was not intended to strike Jack, and the toy bounced off the wall and landed on the floor.

“Carrying it around, all that time - really, Jack, if I were you, I wouldn’t want to be reminded of _those people_ that left you here.”

Jack was relaxing slowly, sprawling back out, but he didn’t pick up the toy. “I really didn’t remember I had it,” he said, eyes still on Pitch. “I don’t know. Does it matter?”

“Does it?” Pitch repeated, lifting one long, bent finger to his chin. His expression was suddenly thoughtful - and as quickly as he’d had time to think, it became cruel. Jack watched him, as a diver might watch a shark. “Tell me the truth, Jack - doesn’t the thought of the Guardians make you angry? How can you be neutral about those who gave up on you so easily, and so soon?”

“I dunno,” Jack said, wishing he could curl up in the corner again. “I - I try not to think about them. It gets me too angry.”

“But my boy,” said Pitch, kneeling in front of him, excitement growing in his eyes. “It is your _right_ to be angry for what they did to you. All those lies they told you about being one of them - all that “now and forevermore” nonsense - are you really so forgiving that you can lie here, day after day, and not wish that they might know the same loneliness, the same sense of betrayal, that they made you feel, when they left you to the maze?”

Jack sat still, but his lower lip had begun to quiver, his eyes narrowing as Pitch’s words struck nerve after nerve.

“No,” he said, with sudden strength. Tears glimmered in his eyes, but he ground his jaw hard between his words. He lifted his eyes to Pitch’s. “I’m _not_ that forgiving.”

Pitch had never smiled so widely. “Nor should you be,” he said, in a low, eager whisper.

He picked up the nesting doll and stood, holding his hand out to Jack. “Come, my boy. I’ve been waiting for this day for a long, long time.”

Jack followed.

The air grew thick with a burning, acrid smell, reminding Jack suddenly of the New Jersey Turnpike. It surprised him for a moment that he could still remember New Jersey, let alone its turnpike, but the smell had been...distinct. Pitch led him into a section of the maze where a puddle of silvery liquid bubbled in the center of the floor, slowly eating it away. The floor sloped downward just enough to be uncomfortable to stand on, with that silver liquid bubbling away, giving off no light, but hot as a room on fire.

Pitch put his hand on Jack’s shoulder, and though the touch was gentle, Jack felt very keenly the slope of the floor beneath him, leading down to that molten pool, and the pressure of Pitch’s hand behind him.

“Look at this one more time, Jack,” said Pitch, holding out the nesting doll. “What did it mean to you, when they gave it?”

“That I...that I was one of them. It was my center. My…the thing that made me one of them.”

“We know that’s a lie now, don’t we. You never were one of them, were you.”

“No,” Jack said distantly.

“If you had been one of them,” Pitch went on, “they would have never stopped looking for you.” He paused. “Or - even if they thought you were one of them - would you want to be one of them, when they give up so easily on their own?”

“ _No_.” The word left Jack in a hiss. “I’d never tell someone they were -” he paused, biting back tears. “Never tell someone they were my _family_ and then leave them here. I would never do that.”

“But you don’t need that to tell you who and what you are anymore, Jack. You don’t need them to give you a family. You have _me_.”  

Jack nodded slowly. “You’re right. I don’t need this to tell me who I am. I know. All of this has shown me that.” He reached up to his temple with his free hand and his gaze when directed at Pitch was something dangerous. “I have it right here.”  His hand went to his heart. “And right here.”

He held his hand out for the nesting doll, boldly looking Pitch in the eye. His eyes were clearer than they had been in ages, piercing past the lank curtain of his dusty hair. Pitch placed the nesting doll in Jack’s hand with a darkly approving smile. The smile widened into a grin as Jack, without a second glance, tossed the toy into the pit of molten lead.

It took fire and burned with a searing blue-green flame.

“That’s my boy,” Pitch murmured, pride in every word as they watched the toy dissipate. “How strong you are, even after such dire betrayal. Such strength deserves a reward.”

When Jack looked back to Pitch, his smile was almost benevolent - certainly closer to benevolence than Jack had ever seen on his face. With the hand not on Jack’s shoulder, Pitch produced a small square of what looked like - what was definitely candy. Powdered sugar dusted his fingertips where it had brushed off the lokum. He’d given some to Jack before, as a reward, and Jack opened his mouth eagerly for Pitch to pop the treat in.

As Jack chewed on the candy, Pitch ran his powdered-sugared fingertips through Jack’s hair. “Soon enough, the Guardians will learn just how strong you are. I’ve been goading them pushing and prodding in just the right ways to bring them to you. They didn’t think you were worth saving but hatred of me is something they’ve always been willing to fight for. Then you’ll have your _true_ reward, my Nightmare Prince.”

The candy melted in his mouth, running sickly sweet down the back of his throat. He swallowed and looked over at Pitch with the gratitude Pitch was used to seeing there.

“Revenge,” said Jack and his mouth quirked up into an uneven grin. “It’s about time. I’ve waited long enough.” 

* * *

The long-undisturbed dust in Camelot stirred as Nicholas St. North, the Tooth Fairy, and Anansi the Spider thundered down the halls, bursting into the room where a round table still stood, waiting for knights to sit it.

North spotted an elaborate, scorched chair, and touched one of the scorchmarks. Soot lifted on his fingers. “These marks are fresh.” He pointed to the inscription. “Toothy, you can read this? 

The Tooth Fairy zipped over, mumbling as she read. “- worthy to seek the holy grail -”

“A scorched chair, a round table, and a mention of the holy grail,” said Anansi, adjusting his glasses to look over them at the round table and the empty, unscorched chairs. “It seems we’ve found Camelot.”

“If this is Camelot, that’s the Siege Perilous,” Tooth said, drawing back from the burnt chair. “Who sat in it?”

“And since they were clearly unworthy,” North stroked his beard, in thought. “--What became of them?”

A tunnel opened in the hall by the door, and Bunnymund leaped out to join the other three Guardians. “Found anything?”

“We might have,” said Tooth. “Any sign of Sandy?”

“Not yet.” Bunny loped over to the chair, sniffing. “These scorch marks are fresh.”

“So we noticed!” said North, holding up his sooty fingers with a flash of a smirk.

Bunny gave a short, sardonic laugh. “Did you also notice Jack sat here?”

“He did?” Tooth’s crest of feathers shook with agitation. “You can smell him?”

“It wasn’t recently, but I can,” Bunny said, backing away from the chair. “Nobody’s tried sitting in that?”

“You want the first try?” North asked.

“You know what else I smell,” said Bunny, turning towards a corner. “Anise.”

The Guardians eyes fell on an intricate box, sitting in a corner of the room. The elaborate silver star on the elegant object gleamed, even in the dull light.

“Uh,” Tooth said, lifting a finger. “Why isn’t that covered in dust?”

That was when the box opened, and the bang and the flash of light hit the Guardians before any of them had a chance to react, taking their sight and hearing with it.

Immediately they reached for each other - Bunny, Tooth, and North did, anyway. Anansi flung spiderwebs about him, screaming curses no one could hear until Tooth found one of his legs and pulled him into the Guardian barricade. With their ears ringing and their eyes blinded, the four Guardians huddled back-to-back in defense of each other, waiting tense and pained as sight and vision slowly returned - but by the time they had vision enough to recognize Pitch, he had already filled the dim room with yet more shadows.

“Can you hear me yet? This really is no fun if you can’t see and hear a little. Although the dizziness - well, that will thankfully hold up for quite a while. Very fortunate for me, not so fortunate for you.”

“Pitch!” North and Tooth shouted.

“Hmm, previously undemonstrated patience,” Anansi mused, moving his glasses in front of his face and blinking his eyes. “So this _is_ a long story!”

“What?” Bunny yelled, still huddled, clutching at his ears even as North and Tooth made their first attempts at rising.

Pitch rolled his eyes. “As glorious as it is to watch you all writhing in helpless discomfort, I’ve waited more than long enough. Even the rabbit should be able to hear me by _now.”_

“Is that Pitch?” Bunny yelled, still over-loud, forcing his eyes open. “Think I need my ears to show you the door?”

The shadowy shape looming in their dimmed vision was clear enough now to focus on. They all turned, half-risen, but still unable to stand entirely under their own power.

“How kind of you all to come to my little party.” If Pitch was, perhaps, enunciating more clearly than his usual wont, well, he had to make himself clear to his audience. “I know that you have been...eager to come do more violence upon my person. Unjust violence, when I’ve only ever wanted what you have -- belief! Adulation! The service of any being to crawl this little planet, if you should so desire it!” His lips peeled back from his uneven teeth. “ _Company_.”

“Too long,” Anansi moaned, all eight of his spider legs planted firmly on the ground as he wove upwards. “Didn’t listen.” he poked a finger in his ear. “Your lies are old and boring, and my ears are sore.”

Pitch’s gleefully malicious grin dropped but the malice in his eyes only burned brighter.

“Fine. Then if you don’t have the patience to listen to me, perhaps you’ll spare the time to listen to _him_.” He turned to the shadows. “You have quite a bit to say, don’t you... _Jack_?”

The boy emerged on a breath of wind, tumbling through the air to land at Pitch’s side, and for a moment, all they saw was the grin - the grin, and the tear tracks.

A thin layer of ice on his skin had given him the illusion of cracking. Grey dust was frozen on every inch of his exposed skin, though his shadowy, black clothing was unmarred by even a loose hair. Snow dusted his shoulders, bare of the silk that cowled his head and draped down in a long cloak behind him. Snow and dust froze in his hair, mottled his skin, clumped his eyelashes like a disease.

His smile was so wide, it seemed his face might break open and bleed. The ice cracking on his face made him look old, old, old - and the black shadows under his eyes did as well. The only part of his face not mottled with frozen dust were the two tear tracks cutting through the ice, glistening with still-flowing tears that had cut a path from his wide, staring eyes, all the way down to his off-kilter smile. His hands clenched his staff as if he was already wringing someone’s neck.

“Hi guys,” he said, his voice ringing too high with tense excitement. “It’s been a while.”

A silent second fell as the Guardians stared at Jack, and Jack at them, and Pitch at everyone with all the anticipation of a child at Christmas.

Bunny broke the silence.

“I’m gonna kill ya,” he swore, eyes locked on Pitch, forcing himself to stand, but falling back to his knees. He threw a boomerang anyway. “You filthy, shadow-sneaking - _I’m gonna kill_ -”

Jack knocked the weapon out of the way, the ice blast freezing the boomerang to the far wall. The Nightmare Prince’s smile had vanished. Now he stood, trembling with eager tension, staff motionless in his white-knuckled grip as he pointed it at the Guardians.

“Jack -” Tooth spoke, her voice soft and gentle. “Jack, please - it’s going to be -”

Pitch cut in, “It’s going to be alright, just like I promised. It’s time for your revenge, Jack.” He turned back to the Guardians, savoring their horror. “Now you can finally hurt the ones who left you alone in the dark.”

“Yeah,” Jack said slowly, a wild look to his eyes. “Yeah, I guess I can.”

He pointed his staff at the Guardians. They crouched there, still unbalanced on the ground, eyes wide with horror.

Jack struck -

Backwards.

He slammed his staff into Pitch, hitting him soundly in a place that still hurt even on myths. The Nightmare King doubled over with a loud “Whooft” as Jack brought the staff up for another swing. The staff cracked loudly as it connected with Pitch’s face, followed by a sudden icy blast that bowled Pitch end over end, slamming him into a wall, freezing him solidly in place.

Nightmare sand funneled into the fissures in the ice, shattering it into a thousand tiny pieces. But as Pitch broke free, he looked completely shaken. He bled from his nose, his hair was askew, and his eyes were wide with disbelief as he stalked towards Jack.

“Stop this at once,” he spat, hissing every word. “You know what happens, Jack, you know what happens when -”

“- when I make you mad?” Jack finished, hefting his staff as Pitch drew close. Pitch paused, eyes wide with indignation at the defiance, but halted by the threat of Jack’s power - and halted again as behind Jack, the Guardians struggled closer. They were all still too unbalanced to walk, but even so, they crawled towards Jack. Jack, unaware of this, trembled, his voice cracking with fear and something else, something deeper and far more broken than fear. “Yeah, I do. That’s the only reason I did what you wanted. Even the things I hated. Like putting on this outfit.”

He ripped off the much-hated cloak and pulled the shoulder-baring tunic over his head, tearing them in the process.

“This outfit,” Jack yelled shrilly, “is _stupid_!”

Pitch’s mouth dropped open with petulant indignation. “I _hand-stitched_ those!”

“This cloak is stupid and - and _you’re_ stupid!” Jack responded, just as petulantly.

“They abandoned you!” Pitch shouted. The Guardians, still crawling towards Jack, all objected to this at once, their angry counterpoints spilling over each other. “They left you alone to rot in the dark, got that little brat you were fond of killed, and you _still_ think you belong _anywhere_ but with me?”

“It doesn’t! _Matter_!” Jack’s shriek was shrill and suddenly manic, cutting the Guardians’ objections short. “Even if -” he faltered. “I don’t know if that’s - I don’t think that’s true - even if it was, though, it doesn’t _matter_. I’m not joining you when your life’s mission is hurting kids! I’m not joining you when you like hurting me!”

Pitch’s mouth was open in sheer, furious, impotent rage. “It was never about _hurting_ you, it was about _teaching you -”_

“To do whatever you said,” Jack cut in, his every word weighted with bitterness. “So I’d help you terrorize kids -”

“It wasn’t about the fear,” Pitch said, but every fiber of Jack knew now what a lie that was. “It’s about them believing in us, it’s about them respecting us -”

“It’s about _you_ getting to control them! To control _me_! Don’t lie!” Jack cried out, his voice cracking and changing pitch with nearly every other word, as if each and every one was being wrung out of him painfully. “It’s always been about making them afraid of us!”

He gripped his staff tightly, hands twisting fitfully, his words echoing with the pain he’d felt during all the suffering inflicted on him.

“They don’t deserve to be afraid and hurt. They deserve to be protected and - and happy.” Jack jabbed his staff threateningly in Pitch’s direction. “No one - _no one_ should have to live their lives in fear. No one deserves to live the way you made me live.”

“Jack, be reasonable,” Pitch chuckled, suddenly amused. “You aren’t even alive.”

Jack hefted the staff higher, closer to Pitch’s face. Behind him, the Guardians were finding their feet. Pitch stopped laughing, his amusement returning to dark, furious anger.

“You lied to me,” he hissed. “You swore obedience. I gave you everything, and you lied to me, you ungrateful -”

“You hurt me!” Jack shot back. “You hurt me so much I - I actually meant it for a while, but -” Jack held a hand to his head, as if he wanted to physically rip what he was feeling out of it “But after that first month, when my head got a little clearer, I said whatever I had to to get my staff and get out. All that time, I pretended to be your little - your little _bootlicker_ , just like I pretended I didn’t hate it every time you _touched_ me,” Jack snapped furiously, spittle flying from the corners of his mouth. 

The other Guardians shared a sharp look of behind Jack with varying levels of concern and growing fury.

“I gave you a home,” Pitch insisted. “Taught you, _protected_ you, and this is how you repay me? With betrayal, and disobedience? I pulled you from the maze! You should lick my boots for that alone!”

“ _You put me in there in the first place!”_ Jack screeched, his words growing wilder, the tear tracks on his cheeks suddenly glistening with a fast flow.

“So what?” Pitch snapped. “I was training you. I showed you all the fear the world had to give you, so that you could make it your own. Some lessons are hard, Jack! I thought you were strong enough to learn it. All I wanted was for you to have strength, to have your precious children all to yourself, and you spat in my face at every turn. Well -” he held his hands out, and the shadows massed behind him - “you think you lived in fear with me, Jack? Get ready to know what it is to truly live in fear. Because I won’t forget this. And I’ll make sure you never stop regretting it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jack said, trembling as the shadows massed. The Guardians were standing behind him, leaning on each other, or their weapons, as the shadows filled the room. “You don’t understand me. You don’t get that it -  it doesn’t matter what you do to me, it doesn’t matter if the Guardians care about me, it doesn’t matter whether I’m a Guardian or not. I will _always_ protect the kids! I will never hurt them! And there is nothing and no one that can change that - not the Guardians, not the Man in the Moon, and definitely not _you_! I’m never going to be what you want me to be, Pitch! I told you before - I’ll die before I ever turn into that.”

He had spent so many years trying to figure out who he was and what place he had in the world…

How strange it was that in this time of pain and weakness, he finally knew himself. He’d known himself enough to cast reminders of his old life into the fire, knowing he no longer needed them to hold onto who he was.

The last shred of betrayal faded from Pitch’s expression, as it twisted into one of pure hatred.

“Die?” Pitch repeated. “Oh, you’ll wish I’d _let_ you.”

He flung whips of nightmare sand at Jack. The nightmares rushed the Guardians in a wave. The whips lashed too fast for Jack to counter, knocking his staff aside and dragging him to the floor. Pitch drew his hand back, a massive knife coalescing in his grip as he lifted it above Jack.

He brought it down - but it glanced off a saber as North reached them, attacking Pitch so ferociously the Nightmare King fell back from Jack.

“PITCH!” the old saint roared. A trail of pulverized nightmares twitched and stilled in his wake. “YOU HAVE GONE TOO FAR!”

The room was full of loose nightmare sand, of Tooth flying in and out of Bunny’s boomerangs, exploding nightmares in three places at once. Jack lay on the floor, suddenly weeping like the children he’d sworn to protect as North pushed Pitch farther and farther back into the shadows. The Nightmares not engaged with Bunny and Tooth and not dissolving behind North descended on Jack.

Anansi swung suddenly to Jack’s side, and his spider form ripped his human form apart. Hairy black legs thick enough to break trees landed on the ground in a cage around Jack, thundering as they fell. He grabbed the nearest nightmare in his fangs and ripped it apart, black sand and drops of venom flinging at the other nightmares. The venom ate them through where it landed, as other nightmares exploded against Anansi’s armored legs. The rest of the nightmares fell back from Jack as the Spider clacked his dripping fangs at them, lunging when they came close enough to threaten Jack.

Pitch was still trying to get to Jack, knocking North’s saber aside with his scythe and trying to rush over to where he lay on the floor surrounded by his protective barrier of spider legs.

“I will teach you respect the hard way, you ungrateful -”

“NO!”

North’s roar thundered and echoed within the confines of the cave, startling some of the closer nightmares into missteps and collisions. He tossed a saber into the air, leaving his hand free to grab Pitch by the back of his shadowy man-dress. The Cossack whipped the Nightmare King back, slamming him into the wall, then caught his sword on the down-swing, slashing Pitch across the face.

“You will teach him nothing!” North insisted. Pitch drove the butt of his scythe into North’s feet, escaping the danger of being trapped there when North was forced to retreat; but no sooner had he reached for Jack again than North had kicked him in the back and was upon him again, stabbing the ground where Pitch rolled just in time to dodge his blows. “You _can_ teach him nothing! Not when he already so unselfish, not when he is already so brave!”

He punctuated each word with lighting stabs of his sabers, leaving punctures in the very stone of the floor. It was only the fluid way that Pitch moved that saved him from being pinned to the floor like a butterfly to corkboard, wiggling like an eel away from each of North’s blows, missing them by a thread each time. His expression was almost puzzled as he dodged.

“Do you actually expect me to believe that you’re going to kill me?” he scoffed between strikes.

North’s eyes flashed and plunged his sword toward the center of Pitch’s chest. His eyes going wide, Pitch cotorted his body just enough that the blade came down next to his torso, pinning his robes, instead of skewering him.

“You have caused,” North said, almost conversational but for the bared and gritted teeth, “far more trouble than to be worth _not_ killing.”

Pitch ripped his shadowy robes trying to escape from him, and narrowly ducked another swing of North’s sabers.

“Tell me, Pitch, do you know anything of Jack’s life? Did you even think to ask of his wishes?”

“I - “

“I know you did not!” North clearly had no interest in whatever Pitch had to say at this point. “If you had, if you’d taken an interest in him as more than something to just control you would have known he would never have joined your side.”

Pitch tried to summon his scythe of nightmare sand again, but North slashed at his hands before it could coalesce, sending the Nightmare King once more into a hissing, stumbling retreat.

“He has always been kind, even when he could expect no kindness in return! He has brought the children joy during times they were joyless - during times even _we_ could not help them.” 

When they’d been fighting the larger battles, and gathering their teeth, delivering their toys and eggs, sending them dreams, Jack had done what none of them had done by playing with the children directly. Sometimes that meant much more to them than a gift or a quarter or a good dream that would evaporate to a cold reality upon waking. The world hadn’t always been as kind as the Guardians were and during those times that it had been particularly unkind, Jack had been the one to be right there with them, instead of giving them his kindness from afar.

“He has a love of humanity in his heart, something you could never hope to understand!”

“Love? As if he could expect any back from those - those fleeting, mundane things?” Pitch spat, finally managing to put enough space between himself and the Cossack to breathe, and to summon his weapon. “I gave him truer love than those limited creatures could muster up in the span of their entire lives! I loved him as a father loves his son! And your good, _kind_ Jack-”

Again, whatever Pitch had been about to say was lost as North howled in wordless rage and lunged, harder, swords flying, a sudden intensity in his voice that hadn’t been there before.

“A father’s love?!” he roared, his swords ringing on Pitch’s scythe as if they would break it into nightmare sand. “You know nothing of a father’s love! You are not capable of such love! A good father would be proud of the young man Jack is without wanting to change him! A good father would never hurt him as you have! A good father knows when to let his children _go._ ”

It seemed Pitch ought to burst out with a scathing retort; but as North drew back to swing, suddenly, Pitch’s hands went slack on the handle of his scythe. He stood, breath shallow and quick, staring, as if in a trance. It lasted only an instant -- sadly, not long enough for North to land a killing blow -- before his vision snapped back and he swung his weapon at his enemy with a screech of pure, hateful rage.

The swing caught on North’s sword, but the second fell quickly on Pitch’s open shoulder. With a howl of rage and pain, the Nightmare King stumbled, his yell joining the whinnies of dying nightmares as Tooth and Bunny culled the herd now too wary to approach the enormous hissing spider and his hoarded prize. Pitch barely blocked North’s next blow, and barely dodged the next.

Wide-eyed, shocked, and injured, the Nightmare King backed away, as North advanced on him with a steely glint in his eye that was as far removed from the usual twinkle as Pitch had ever seen.

The nightmare sand floating in the room suddenly shone, turning the brilliant gold of dreamsand, as the Sandman bounced into battle. The nightmare sand floating around him transformed in a wave, until the room was luminous, as if full of the sun.

Behind the little man floated a miniature golden sailing ship, with two little figures safely on board. The ship sailed into the room and dissolved, and the two little figures leaped to the ground, one wielding an iron poker, bent almost at a right angle; the other a gleaming sword too big for a child to carry.

Cupcake. And, and, holding aloft the improbable sword - Jamie.

“Jamie!”

Jack, having been so still and silent since his rebellion from Pitch, flew from beneath Anansi’s protection to catch Jamie up in his arms. Jamie dropped the sword, but his questions fell quiet as Jack sobbed, too loudly to hear them, into the boy’s hair.

Anansi scuttled over to crouch protectively over all three. “Nice sword,” he said, to Jamie, in a tone of sudden, surprised interest. “Wherever did you get it?”

“Oh, uh.” Jamie looked at the sword. “I pulled it from some rock. I think I’m the rightful King of England?”

“How _did_ I miss that?” Anansi wondered aloud.

It was right then, in Anansi’s moment of distraction, that a night-mare swept by, trying to swarm around Jack and drag him off, but before Jack could cry out, before Anansi or even Sandy could react, the night-mare found itself bashed in the head with Cupcake’s already-bent iron poker.

“Did you really just try that?” Cupcake said with extreme incredulousness to what was now a cloud of nightmare sand. “In front of me?”  

Jack only started crying harder at the close call. The Sandman took one look at Jack, ragged and sobbing, at the battle raging around him - and then at Pitch.

Pitch caught Sandy’s eye just as the little man cracked his dreamsand whips into being, and the last shred of hope drained from his face.

Sandy lashed his whip clear across the room, coiling it around Pitch and whipping him away from North, and into the scorch-marked chair.

What remained of the nightmares shrieked and fled as the ground cracked open and the burning dragon emerged, towering over Pitch as he sat, fixed in place by the chair’s magic.

**“YOU. ARE. NOT. WORTHY.”**

But Pitch didn’t scream. Instead, he looked across the room, where Jack was burying his face in Jamie’s hair. Something pulled Jack’s eyes up, to meet the Nightmare King’s.

“This won’t hold me forever,” Pitch hissed, before the darkness sucked him down.

“Sandy! Give us some cover!” Bunny shouted, plucking an egg from his holster and throwing it at the roof. The egg exploded in a rainbow cloud that broke the stone. Sunlight, dust, and falling stones bounced off a shield of dreamsand as Sandy covered them all in golden protection, and when the rumbling subsided, he whipped the cover away. North whistled sharply, the sound piercing and far-reaching, and the jingle of the approaching reindeer and sleigh seemed to answer.

“Jack?” Jamie said, his words finally reaching through, as Jack had fallen silent. Jack looked at Jamie again, his ashen face blank, his tears still flowing. The little boy touched Jack’s face, looking closer to tears with every moment. “Are you okay?”

Jack breathed out suddenly, and shook his head. His eyes seemed clearer when he opened them again, and the smile he gave the boy was more natural, yet still, something about it didn't comfort Jamie.

“Yeah, I’m great,” Jack said, with a little too much brightness. “You’re fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”

He clutched Jamie to him again in a desperate hug as the sleigh flew overhead. Jack suddenly felt strong arms around him, and North lifted both boys off the ground together.

“Time to go,” he said, his lion’s roar softened, and all the bright cheer absent from his usually jovial tone.

They rose on a cloud of dreamsand, landing gently in the sleigh. North placed Jack and Jamie beside Tooth and Cupcake before taking the reins. Bunny jumped up on the edge of the sleigh and sat next to Jack, looking over him at Tooth, their worried expressions mirroring each other.

Sandy had just landed next to them when the sleigh lurched as a spider half as large as the vehicle itself jumped on the back.

“Dial down the size, mate!” Bunny shouted, as the lurch threw him into the back of the sleigh, and Tooth threw her arms around Jack to hold him in place. “We’re making a quick getaway here!”

Anansi, every hair on his body bristling, clutched the sleigh with all eight legs. His voice bristled as harsh as his body, every word strained with tension. “ _It will take me a moment_.”

“Wait!” Jamie shouted, hefting the sword in his grip. “Um, can we put this back? I don’t have time to be the rightful king of England. I have math homework and there’s a dance next week - and I don’t really know anything about international politics.”

Bunny plucked the sword from Jamie’s hand and threw it back through the hole in the roof of the castle.

“There’s a dance next week,” Jack said distantly, and then he laughed. “There’s a dance. Next week. A dance. You said…”

Jamie looked to Jack with a worried expression on his face and squished closer to him in the sleigh.

“Jack?”

Realizing that he was worrying Jamie, Jack said, “It’s okay. You’re okay. Everything’s okay now.”

As the sleigh rose into the air and eventually passed through an entrance to the surface world of London above, away from the magical bubble around Camelot, Jack looked out at a world that was now far too bright and overwhelming.

“Everything’s okay now.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warnings: This chapter has elements of mental illness, suicidal ideation, mentions of abuse, etc. Some dark stuff. It's also HELLA LONG. 46 pages in gdocs. 
> 
> Sorry for the long, long delay. We all had a lot of RL going on and Kate was away from home and busy for a few whole months.

 

"Jack.”

It took Jack a moment to remember who the voice belonged to. It was hard to keep his thoughts in order when the wind on his face was so, so distractingly, vibrantly strong.

Oh. Yes. Jamie.

“How you doing, buddy?” Jack responded, beaming at the boy. “It’s not too cold for you up here, is it?”

His smile was fixed on his face like it had broken and stuck that way. Between that and the cracked ice that still clung there, Jamie looked as if he wasn't sure whether or not to try and return it.

“I’m good,” he answered, each word cautious. “But...I was gonna ask how you were doing.”

“I’m great,” Jack fired back. “I’m better than great, I’m fantastic. I’ve never been better.”

He patted Jamie on the back, and rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder, feeling the warmth, the faint pulse of life through Jamie’s summer t-shirt.

Jamie’s uncertain smile began to strengthen into a true one. “That’s good,” he said, “because you were looking kind of...you seemed kind of messed up, just now.”

“It’s over, so everything’s going to be okay now,” Jack answered. “That’s why I’m great. You know how when something bad happens and then it’s over and everything’s okay, how it’s the best feeling in the world?”

“Yeah. I guess.”

“That’s why I’m good right now.” He gave Jamie another smile but he worked harder on this one. It was less of a rictus grin, it was more genuine. “Now I know I’ll be okay.”

He didn't say the rest, the ending: _now I know that you’re okay._

Jamie didn't need to know about the horrors he’d seen, none of them, and especially not the ones that involved him.

The sleigh went in for a landing in Jamie’s yard and the Guardians piled out to see Jamie and Cupcake off.

“Oh hey,” Jack said, as something floated up from under years and years of muck, “I just remembered something. You have a dance coming up, right?”

Jamie blushed a little bit, but fortunately Cupcake was still dusting the grass stains off her knees, and didn't see Jamie’s very quick glance at her. “Uh, sure, I - yeah I guess so,” he said, shrugging, as if the dance was the last thing on his mind, and not, perhaps, the third.

“Enjoy it,” Jack said, enthusiasm brightening his features. “I've been to so many school dances, and they always start out with kids on the sidelines, all nervous because it’s a dance - the sooner you get over that, the sooner the fun can start. And man do they get fun!” he jumped in place a bit, his grip tightening on his staff, an unseasonably cool breeze ruffling the late summer air as he did. “There was this one sock hop, in the 50’s, the kids invented a whole new dance move. I can‘t believe it didn't take off. Let me show you -”

By then Cupcake had started to pay attention, and now the children’s worries were entirely forgotten as Jack demonstrated the long-lost dance move. But the Guardians, hanging back by the sleigh, each still with a hand on a weapon, if they had it, were not taken in by the fun.

“The six of you,” said Tooth, to a few of her mini-fairies hovering nearby. “I want you to stay here. Two per child at all times, the other two on patrol. Just in case Pitch comes looking for the kids.”

The mini-fairies chirped the affirmative and zipped off in pairs, hovering at the edges of the kids’ field of vision - not that they noticed, with Jack cavorting to their great distraction.

North had something to offer in the way of protection as well as soon as Jack’s dancing was done. “A moment, children -”

The two actual kids, and Jack, looked over. Jack’s face lit up as if he hadn't seen North in ages (even though he’d just seen him half a minute ago).

“See these snow-globes?” The giant Cossack crouched, to be near the children’s eye level. He held two travelling snow-globes in his hands, offering them to the children. “Now, these are presents,” he said, mirth still warming his voice, but his tone held a seriousness the children had not heard before. “But not toys. They are for making the quick escapes, should danger come calling.”

They were brave enough to handle a mention of danger, and the Guardians owed them honesty by now, for so many reasons. Jamie and Cupcake took the snow-globes, carefully, looking them over with solemn marvel.

“Only think of where you wish to be, throw them, and poof!” said North, as the children took the snowglobes. “A portal will open there - whether it is home, the Tooth Palace, or the workshop in the North Pole, there you will be.”

The children’s eyes lit up.

“We can visit Santa’s Workshop any time?” Jamie exclaimed.

“You have a palace?” Cupcake asked of Tooth.

“Is for emergencies only!” North said, laughing slightly. “Should you find yourselves in danger, you can come to where it’s safe to one of us.”

“We should head out. Jack needs some time to get cleaned up and rest,” said Bunny, his eyes darting nervously over to their friend.

North patted them each on the shoulder with a massive hand and they turned away back to Jack.

“Are you going to be back soon?” Jamie asked.

There was a strange pause, as Jack suddenly looked like he’d forgotten how to speak.

“Sure,” he said, but he’d paused too long for the “sure” to be genuine. His head was rattling suddenly with the possibility of “soon,” the very amount of time that he had before him. To do whatever he wanted. There was so much to do. So much - even now, so much sun, so many sounds, from the wind in the leaves to the voices of his friends around him. Sometimes the leaves reminded him of things rustling in the dark. It was all he could do to remind himself that they were leaves. It was all he could do to remind himself what leaves were.

He opened his mouth to say more, but North was patting him on the shoulder. “But first,” the Cossack said, with a great show of cheer, “there is much to do! Many questions to ask - a Guardian is always busy, never more so than when the Boogeyman rears his head!” he winked at the children, as if he were not herding Jack back to the sleigh.

They had to get him away before the crack in Jack’s armor shattered and whatever was waiting behind came pouring out.

“Bye,” Jamie called, a touch of uncertainty to his voice. Cupcake waved too, as the Guardians piled into the sleigh and North very quickly set the reindeer to flying. Jack felt the solidity of the wood beneath him, spread his palms across the lacquered surface, and felt as though fractures were webbing across some part of his body that was not, somehow, flesh and bone.

Suddenly he was shivering.

“I’ll see you soon, Jamie,” Jack said, giving the boy a reassuring smile. The moment he was on the sleigh and it was up in the air again where Jamie couldn't see, that smile faded away.

Jamie watched as the sleigh rose in the sky, hoping that Jack really was okay - or at least would be okay - and then remembered something.

“Aw,I never did get to throw my throwing boot at Pitch,” he groused. He turned to Cupcake who was looking at him expectantly as she tucked her snow-globe into her pocket.

Jack’s encouragement had left Jamie feeling emboldened,

“So, Cupcake, about that dance coming up...”

“I’ll be around at six to pick you up,” she said, smiling. It was a confident, knowing smile, and she said nothing else before turning to head home. “And I’m bringing a fireplace poker, just in case Pitch decides to ruin the dance. You should bring your throwing boot.”

“Okay!” Jamie called after her, enthusiasm pouring over his face.

He turned homewards, examining the snow-globe once more, happy that everything had turned out okay. He was going to the dance with Cupcake, Pitch had been defeated once more, and most importantly of all, Jack was safe now and he was okay.

* * *

Jack was not okay.

Jack was at the bottom of the sleigh, hiding his face from the wind and the light. He liked knowing that they were there, but just then, there was too much of both. He had held himself together for Jamie, but now that Jamie wasn't there -

Noise blurred around him, wind and familiar voices, safe voices, but there were just too many of them and they were - they were saying his name -

Something _touched him_. Jack snapped upright and away, but didn't scream. He’d learned so early that screaming just attracted more...

No. It was Tooth. Just Tooth. Her pretty face, even prettier than he remembered, her colors so _vibrant_ \- how could any living thing have so much _color_? But so worried. It took him a moment to remember. That was what worry looked like.

“Jack?” she said. She’d been saying his name over, and over, he realized. “Jack, tell me the truth,” she said, or started to say, but stopped midway through “Truth” as Jack curled up again, lying on the floor of the sleigh, curved into a corner and watching them all with eyes half-open against the light.

Tooth looked at the other Guardians, all silent now as Jack raised his hands to cover his eyes a little.

“What truth?” he asked, suddenly, his voice so calm, so...blank.

“You’re not alright,” she said, looking as if she wanted to reach for him, but not doing it. “What happened? What did Pitch do to you?”

Jack shrugged. “Made me listen to him. Made me tell him stories. Pulled my hair. Hit me.”

At the back of the sleigh, Bunny and Anansi, who had finally compressed himself back into a man’s shape, exchanged dark looks. Tooth and Sandy each looked near to tears.

“But you’re safe now,” said Tooth, inching closer, but not touching him. “It’s over. Pitch will never touch you again.”

There was a hint of steel in her voice, that echoed the dark looks Bunny and Anansi had just exchanged.

Jack shrugged. “Okay.”

The blank looks all the Guardians not driving the sleigh gave him mirrored Jack’s...everything.

“Exactly how long were you in there, Jack?” Anansi asked.

Jack shrugged again. “I can’t tell you exactly.”

“Why not?”

"I lost track after the first few decades."

"...but Jack, it's only been a day. We went looking for you twenty hours ago," Anansi went on, brows knitted into actual genuine concern. No trickery, no guile, just worry.  

"Oh.” There was a hint of clarity in Jack’s expression, as he processed it. As if it made sense. “Okay."

“Jack,” said North, his voice as gentle as it could be over the wind. “Anywhere you wish to go - we will take you there. Where is it to be?”

Jack lay there, thinking.

“The Tooth Palace,” he said, finally. He missed the open air. He had also missed the fairies, and their pretty jewel-brightness, and their gentle affection for him.

“It is done,” said North, swirling the snow-globe he had left and throwing it.

* * *

The fairies swarmed Jack when they landed at the Tooth palace, and he smiled for the first time since leaving Jamie at home as they covered his body with their tiny fairy hugs. He knew what they were, he knew they were touching him kindly, and their chirping blocked out all of the sounds in the world with a very musical kind of white noise -

They chirped their way into silence as Tooth hovered in front of him, making room for their queen’s voice. “Jack.”

He opened his eyes, met hers for a moment, then looked away suddenly as if he were afraid to make eye contact.

Tooth’s throat constricted. She swallowed her tension away before speaking.

“Jack, do you want to take a bath?” she asked.

He looked at her like he was trying to figure out a trick question. “Maybe?”

He was covered in dust and grime so thick, he could have drawn in it. Tooth nodded to her mini fairies.

“Girls, show him the way. Jack, you don’t have to, but you look like you need one,” she said, as kindly as possible. She seemed to not want to order Jack to do anything - but orders were what he was waiting for. It was easier, not having to think for himself.

He nodded, drifting along on his own breeze as the fairies tugged him away from the Guardians, towards the lower levels of the palace.

The Guardians all exchanged another glance, but before they could really start to talk, a fairy zipped back to Tooth’s ear, chirping in an urgent, but unsure tone.

“I think I should help -” she said.

He wasn't in a state where it seemed wise to leave him alone.

“Go,” North said, nodding. “I think also you should.”

She left the Guardians, buzzing down to where Jack was sitting in a wide, shallow bath, water trickling down from a spout onto his white hair, just...sitting.

The fairies hadn't even managed to get him out of his clothes - and he hadn’t taken them off before plunking, stock still, in the middle of the bath. The only movement he made was occasionally lifting his hand and watching as the water trickled over it, as if he was marveling at the sensation of it on his skin.

He finally looked up at Tooth, eyes wide.

“It’s water,” he said, as if sharing some beautiful secret with her, one that could disappear if he spoke too loudly about it. “I only saw it a few times. And a lot of time it had monsters or blood in it.”

He glanced over at her right after he said that, as if only just realizing that it was a strange or upsetting thing to say and then looked away, back at the water.

“Jack, since your clothes are already wet, why don’t you take them off so you can get cleaned up properly and so I can get you into something dry. Is that okay?”

Jack nodded at her vaguely and stood up.

“Girls, can you get him a sheet for privacy and help him out of his clothes?”

The fairies started moving, diligently, disappearing and reappearing with a bed sheet, holding it up as a privacy screen between Jack and Tooth.

“Just let me know when you’re back in the water,” she said to Jack.

“Okay.” He disrobed and climbed back in, then sat, letting the water trickled across his hands. “I’m back in.”

The mini-fairies flew off with the sheet and Tooth climbed into the water with him, respectfully keeping her eyes above waist level. The thin layer of ice the was started to spread out from Jack’s waist helped with that anyway.

She reached for a water jug and slowly, so Jack wasn't surprised by anything she was doing, poured it over the top of his head, working her finger through his hair to remove the clumps of dust and grime. When his hair was clean, she took a soft cloth that mini-fairies handed her to work on cleaning the frozen dust off of his face.

“There you are,” she finally said gently, when his face was clean, just as she had so long ago when he’d gotten Jokul Frosti’s splinters in his eyes and she’d cleaned away the blood and ice.

Just like then, she looked beautiful to Jack, beautiful enough, that after so much ugliness, it was a weight on his chest. He let out a breath of air that made hardly a sound and yet, at the same time, was anguished. He breathed like he was desperate for it and choked from trying to breathe it all in at once.

Too much color, too much kindness, too much to take in all at once. This couldn't be his world again. It was too nice and nice things were always taken away.  

He was in enough of a panic that he barely noticed Tooth calling his name. The world was swimming. Before long, she and the mini-fairies had gotten him into a luxurious silken robe, soft on his skin - and very old, judging from the look of it. It had been preserved well, perhaps by the magic of the Tooth Palace, but it looked like something out of a history book or from the diorama at a museum about ancient India rather than something people would wear in the modern day.

There was a distinct lack of wing holes so he wondered whose it was, or if there’d ever been a time she’d been a normal human, wingless and featherless.

He wound up in what could only be Tooth’s rarely-used bed, covered in blankets, with Tooth holding his hand without really realizing how he’d gotten there. That wasn't to say that he hadn't seen Tooth and her fairies guide him into it, but just because he’d seen it hadn't meant that he’d been living it as it happened.

Only now, did he reconnect with reality again.

“Jack, can you hear me?” she said gently, looking down at him, face twisted into palpable concern.

“Yeah,” he said distantly. “Yeah, zoned out for a minute. Too much. I can’t - there’s too much light and sound and color. It’s -”

“What do you need from me?” she asked.  

“Stop talking,” he said, and then realizing how that sounded, he explained, “I can see you or hear you. I can’t deal with both right now. I’m used to everything being dark and ugly. It’s too much of the opposite.”

Smiling at him, her smile gentle and sad, she stopped talking and simply kept holding his hand, fingers brushing against his.

“And I, uh, I could maybe use a hug right now,” Jack admitted, his voice going higher pitched.

She stood up from where she was kneeling to sit next to him on the bed and he scooted over to make even more room, then leaned his head against her shoulder. Feathers. The sweet smell of feathers. Nag champa. Jasmine.

Her arms enveloped him, hands rubbing his back and threading through his hair.

That was when the dam, swollen with decades worth of rain, finally burst. The first sobs were physical, his whole body trembling, and the rest tumbled out like he was a basket turned upside down and shaken. It was the kind of crying most people hoped happened in front of people they trusted or not in front of anyone at all, snot riddled, and rife with ugly snorting sounds,that only happened when the body took over and the mind had no choice in the matter.

Tears seeped out of his eyes, not in drops, but like a flood spreading over a plain. He wiped his face and more replaced them, his whole body shaking even when his sobs made no noise.

She held him and didn't stop holding him, not until the flood waters dried up, and consciousness left him.

* * *

Tooth practically had to pry herself from Jack’s grip. As he’d fallen asleep, his arms had clamped around her waist like they’d frozen solid in that position. For a while, she hadn’t wanted to move. She wasn’t used to this, to a Jack that was not okay. Even during the worst of it all when they’d faced Jokul Frosti, there’d been a part of him that never quite stopped being the unflappable Jack they knew. Any moments of rage or hopelessness had always passed.

But his sadness now ran with the kind of depth that came of years of unrelenting sorrow, sadness made to feel so big that now it seemed like he felt that all his life was filled with it.

She had lost so much in her life but the worst of her grief and sorrow had only glanced upo pain like this. A part of her wanted to stay and hold him.

But there was work to be done and there were decisions to be made. So eventually, when he was sound asleep, she pried herself free and left a big squishy pillow in her place. She’d covered him with blankets and left Baby Tooth nestled at his neck.

Then she walked out to meet the others.

It was good timing. Sandy had just returned from delivering some dreams, and as they gathered to make a decision on what the do next, the looks the Guardians were exchanging had changed from ones of varying levels of shock and horror, to a shared resolve - and a deep, growing anger.

Tooth was the first to say it.

“Pitch Black,” she said, pronouncing her words as carefully as the queen she was - and as mercilessly as the warrior she also was, “has proven himself too dangerous to be allowed freedom any longer. He’s rejected the Enkidu oath more than once. And since I don’t know any way to trap him permanently, I/m going to kill him the next chance I get.”

She looked at the others - no, at Sandy - as if daring him to tell her she should feel otherwise.

The Sandman, however, had a wry expression on his face, and the sand above his head became little images of Pitch, and Tooth, and a tinier version of Sandy in between them - a tiny version which lashed out at Pitch with hair-thin whips of sand, and pulled the sand Pitch apart. The message was clear - _Not if I get the chance first._

“But what are we gonna do about Jack in the meantime?” Bunny put in. He hadn’t put the larger of his boomerangs away since leaving Camelot, and he spun it restlessly in his paw.

“See how he is in the morning,” said North, a hint of gruffness in his tone. “Is possible he will be better, and then I think, back to the Pole with me to keep an eye on. Yetis will help, elves will help, until he is better, yes. Until we are sure he is not a danger to himself. Sandy -” the gold little man looked up. “In this case, perhaps Jack is to be like a child we guard for a while, yes? He may need sweet dreams for many nights.”

Sandy nodded. He would be there. Even now he let off a tendril of sand, letting it snake its way through the Tooth Palace towards Tooth’s room.

“Great. I’ll look for Pitch,” Bunny growled. “I’ll get started now.”

“I think, perhaps, you won’t need to do that for a while -” Anansi cut in. Spiderwebs stretched between his fingers in a complicated cat’s cradle, and the spider crossed his eyes slightly as he read the story half-formed there. “Thanks to Sandy,” he flashed a subdued smile at the Sandman - “Pitch is most theatrically and satisfyingly hoisted on his own petard, for the moment. You may change your plans once I remind you of a story which, I think, may lead us toward a way to facilitate the death our fairy queen suggests -”

Bunny’s voice was soft, almost a mumble, as he said, “Way ahead of you, mate.”

“Are you?” asked Anansi, pulling a line in the story web, his eyebrow raised. He looked from Bunny to the story, and his eyebrow rose further. “I see you _have_ been busy,” he said, his tone mild in such a way as to be deliberately ironic. “Goodness me.”

“Is one night,” North said. “We should wait here, in case Pitch breaks out soon enough to make a good story. Is possible?”

Anansi shrugged at North’s question. “Many things are, including this.”

“Then let us wait,” the leader of the Guardians said. He looked at them all, his companions, his friends, his Guardians who, for so long, had been incomplete without Jack. “Let us be here for him, when he wakes.”

 _Let us be here for each other_ , he thought. How would they all cope, if the Jack that woke was not the Jack they knew?

* * *

Tooth had fallen asleep on the bed next to Jack. After her talk with the others, she’d climbed in next to him, initially content to simply watch over him as he slept. He’d briefly woken and pulled her in close so that turned into more of a cuddle, though.

Even as he slept, the occasional tear dripped a slow drip down his cheek, as if he was having nightmares - despite the dusting by Sandy - or filled with such overwhelming sorrow even his sleeping body had to let it leak out.

It made her resolve to kill Pitch even stronger.

She didn't want to see it, though, the slow tears that shouldn't have been there in sleep - or been there ever- and the entire ordeal had been emotionally exhausting so she fell asleep as well. Sleep was a rare thing for her, always as driven as she was, sustained so much by the belief of children, but that meant when it came time for sleep to take her, there wasn't much she could do to resist it.

She drifted off, her hand clasping Jack’s tightly.

She woke to empty arms and the frantic chirps of her fairies.   

They were tugging on her trying to wake her up.

“Jack! Where’s Jack?”

Baby Tooth tugged on her hand to try to guide her. They’d seen him pull himself away from her and sneak out.

Tooth took to the air zipped outside to the others. Sandy was napping on his cloud, tendrils of dream sand reaching out to the people that needed dreams. He had long since mastered the ability to do his job while taking naps of his own. North was tending to his reindeer. Bunny and Anansi had somehow produced a deck of cards out of nowhere and seemed to be playing the most intense game of Go Fish that had possibly ever been played.

“Have you seen Jack? I fell asleep and the fairies woke me up and he’s gone!”

Sandy started awake, looking around frantically.

“How did he sneak past us?” asked Anansi quizzically.  

“He can be sneaky when he wants to be,” said Bunny, hopping to his feet. “It’s the only way he’s managed to get the drop on me for pranks on occasion.” .

“It’s all my fault,” Tooth said frantically, “I shouldn't have fallen asleep -”

“Is not your fault. Today was an exhausting day for us all,” said North hopping into his sleigh. “Sandy nodded off, too. No need for panic yet. The fairies say he went away on his own?”

She nodded. “They would have noticed if Pitch had broken in. And I was _right there_.”

“Then we will find him. He has likely not gone far.”

Bunny and Anansi hopped into the sleigh and the mini-fairies led the way, gesturing desperately in the direction they’d seen Jack fly off in.

* * *

North turned out to be right.

“Down there!” Bunny called out frantically, pointing to a small glade in the mountains, not at all far from the Tooth Palace. Apparently, he’d only caught a glimpse of white hair and blue hoodie but as they drew closer, the way he cried out “Strewth!” and hopped out of the sleigh, not content to wait until they’d landed, meant there was something to be alarmed about.  

When they all drew closer to the ground, they could see why.

North’s blood ran colder than the ice that surrounded his home.

Jack hadn't just been sitting or laying in the glade. His body was in a still pool of water, only about two feet deep, the surface slightly frozen over. His eyes were closed and there was a serene expression on his face. 

By the time they all landed, Bunny was already reaching through the thin ice and pulling him out, in a complete panic.

“Jack! Jack!”

The moment Jack was touched, he startled, making it clear he hadn't drowned, and when he was pulled to sit upright, he let out the breath he’d been holding.

“What? What?” he cried out, squirming in Bunny’s gripped, alarmed at being touched and at the panic the others were showing. “What - what’s wrong?”

They all breathed a sigh of relief the moment he spoke. Bunny held the paw that wasn't grasping Jack’s shoulder to his chest, as if he’d only narrowly dodged a heart attack of mythical proportions.

“What were you doing under there, Jack?” Tooth asked him anxiously.  

“Crikey, mate, you gave us a scare!”

“I was just -” Jack was shaking and it wasn't from the cold. He was still clearly startled. “It was quiet. Too much. Too much light and sound and everything is so beautiful and color. All - the color. And I wanted it for so long.” His expression was anguished. “But it’s just - it’s too much. So I found this pool and I've been laying at the bottom with my eyes closed. Disappearing. No sound. No light. Just...quiet. I can hold my breath a long time; you know how that is.”

They all needed to breathe but could hold their breath longer than mortal beings. Sandy didn't breathe at all.

“It’s okay. I just come up to breathe when I need to. And I don’t mind water that much anymore. I still hate it, but I’m used to the things I hate. You just deal with the fear, you know? You just live in it and it’s there, and you let it wash over you and it doesn't hurt as much anymore. You just live with it. I’m good at that now.”   

They all looked at him with sadness in their gazes and Tooth knew they were all thinking the same thing.

If nothing else had proven that the Jack they knew had been damaged horribly, it was this. The Jack they’d known, before the maze, had loved the light and sound and beauty of the world. He’d reveled in it, in seeing and experiencing everything he could. He hadn't hidden himself away in the dark on purpose.

And even if he needed quiet time to himself, he never would've taken refuge under water. Not when it made him so anxious to have his face wet because of his death.

Now he was dealing with it but it wasn't because he’d overcome that fear. It was because a single fear no longer mattered when you feared nearly everything. He felt that the things he was afraid of were simply something to endure, enough that he could lay under the water, still feeling the same panic and terror it had always caused, and enduring it for the quiet, empty nothing, for the relief it gave from the bombardment of the things he’d missed and yet now caused him pain.  

Bunny lifted Jack out of the water, holding him close, and Jack simply allowed it to happen, staring blankly ahead, as if someone manhandling him was another thing to be endured. 

“Jack, we should perhaps be deciding now to take somewhere where you might recover best,” said North slowly, his usually bombastic voice very nearly quavering. “I was originally thinking the Pole -”

North realized, with a sinking feeling, that the pole was not a good place for Jack. The yetis, helpful as they were, were noisy and harried. The elves, well-meaning as they were, were simple and clumsy, and too prone to mischief. There was too much going on for the workshop. Jack would spend his time there trying to hide from the activity, not warming to it. The same went for the frantic activity of the Tooth Palace.

Jack needed somewhere peaceful, somewhere quiet, where he could get used to being in the world again but not where it felt like his senses were being bombarded.

“Ahem.” the clearing of Anansi’s throat cut through North’s thoughts. “Much as I hate to remind you, North, given that it is not a pleasant thing I must remind you of, but you've forgotten a line of this story which you yourself began.”

And North remembered - the hag in the woods with the iron teeth and the chicken-footed hut. _"You do not have time to buy my help! So you will have to be in my debt."_

And he had promised to do her impossible tasks - when they’d rescued Jack. And rescued him, they had. Physically.

North nodded. “I had forgotten. I remember now.”

But as quickly as the Cossack saw problems, he found answers. “Bunny.”

“Yeah?”

“Will you take care of him?” North asked. Tooth and Sandy looked at each other, realizing as they did that this was probably their best plan. Anansi considered, looking skyward in thought, and nodded in assent.

Bunny nodded, too. “Yeah.Yeah, I will.”

“Will he be all right in the Warren?” Tooth asked. “I mean, he _is_ winter, and it’s not exactly wintry in there -”

“I’ll take him out for snow as often as he needs,” Bunny said. “Just have to work out a trip outside every so often. Easter’s more than half a year away and spring is a much faster job to bring in the southern hemisphere than in the north. It’s do-able.”

“Is calm there, calmer than the pole or the palace,” North put in. “It is the best of what we can do for him, just now. And we will help,” he added, nodding at Bunny. “Take him to North Pole, and I will take the boy on a bracing walk through the Arctic for a day here and there. It will be good for both of us.”

Tooth nodded.

Jack kept staring ahead as they made their decisions about him, leaning against Bunny’s shoulder. He was used to having his decisions made for him. It was easier to not think about it - to not think about anything.

North walked over to him and Bunny and knelt in front of him.

“Jack, I need you to look at me.”

Jack’s gaze teetered a bit in getting there but he managed to drag it up to North’s face. The blankness of Jack’s eyes cut into North’s heart but he kept his voice steady.

“You are not well, my young friend. I know you were feeling overwhelmed but do you understand this?”

“Yeah, I know.” said Jack. “I’m kinda a little...” He made an odd fluttering gesture of his hand.

“We think the Warren is best for you now. Is bright and beautiful but mostly quiet. There is light and color, but shade and quiet. Bunny can look after you, until you are feeling yourself again. And we can visit as often as you need us to.”

“Okay,” Jack said flatly.   

“Is this arrangement something you will be happy with?”

Jack simply shrugged. “Sure. I guess.”

“Jack,” said Bunny gently. “Mate, are you just agreeing to agree or…?”  

Jack shrugged again. “I dunno. I'm not - I’m not really _thinking_ right now. More than I have to. So I dunno what I think. I guess that sounds okay.”

It was like his ordeal had ironed him out to something flat.  

“If anything needs to change,” Jack went on, “and I start - I start thinking again, I can just tell you guys where I wanna be.”

“Yes, you can. And if you decide you want to try staying at the Tooth Palace again or the Pole, then we can do whatever you wish,” North reassured him. “For now, though, there is somewhere I must go.  A favor I must repay. I will be back soon and be visiting the Warren, I promise. Is - is it alright if I give you a goodbye hug?"

North was not the kind of man that asked people if they wanted a bear hug or not but he didn't know how much Jack wanted to be touched or not and out of love, he was willing to do whatever Jack needed.

“Sure,” Jack said, and at least a little genuine brightness entered his voice.

North hugged him tightly - but briefly - before letting him go and getting to his feet again.

“Bunny, Sandy will be coming to be giving him good dreams. If you ever need to pass news on how he is - or if he wants visits from the rest of us - he can pass them along so you are not having to ever leave him.”

“Right,” Bunny agreed, picking up Jack’s staff and scooping his young friend up his arms, finagling them so he could carry both.

“And now,” North said, his chest heaving as he drew in a breath. “I go to repay my debt.”

* * *

The chicken-footed hut was in the same clearing North had last found it, but Baba Yaga was not in when North arrived.

For a second, leaving crossed his mind. No point in waiting for the old witch if he could be helping Jack - what if she didn't return for a long while?

“I give it ten minutes,” North declared to the single reindeer he’d ridden to the Russian forest.

“Ten minutes?” the screech fell on him like wind. Above North, the trees parted as the old witch’s flying mortar broke through them, the witch livid inside. She landed with a thud, climbing out of her mortar and poking a long, skinny, iron-strong finger in North’s chest. “Your solemn oath is worth only ten minutes? So much for honor! Look what a lazy servant I’ve saddled myself with. Well if anyone can work the laziness out of you, it’s Babushka. Get inside.”

“How can I be late, Babushka?” North asked, as Baba Yaga pushed him to the door of the hut. “I have only just found Jack, and he is hurt so badly you can barely say he’s rescued at all. Yet here I come to you.”

 _And the sooner I complete your impossible tasks and return to Jack, the better_ , he thought.

Baba Yaga snorted. “And stupid, too. You were so sure rescue would be as easy as having Jack back in your clutches, weren't you? So sure! And so foolish, you might have signed your life away to me if I had been a little sneakier with my words. You should have been clever enough to negotiate instead of just putting yourself wholly in my debt! Hah!” She unlocked the last of the locks and threw the door open. “But then, you were never famous for cleverness, you only married clever.”

She pushed North through the door before he could object. Before he could bristle any harder at the mention of his wife, she slapped something against his chest so hard it knocked the air from his lungs. “Well don’t just stand there.” His arms closed automatically around the thing, a half-rusted sieve. “Fill my bath with water from the tank! You can use that bucket. Move quickly! I want a bath at sundown, hot and steaming!”

She slammed the door closed behind herself, and every single lock clicked tight into place, locking Nicholas St. North firmly away from the world - and from Jack, wherever he was, however he was doing.

* * *

Jack slid onto the grass on his own well enough, but without a flourish upon landing, or any kind of enthusiasm at all. It wasn’t so much the frost spirit’s solemnity that was unsettling, as much as it was every moment of delight that he was so deliberately _not taking._

And he looked around the warren like he’d never seen it before – or like he’d remembered it differently, and was trying to match his visions up.

Jack turned in a circle in place, slowly, mouth agape, eyes half-lidded, as if even the soft dawn-like light of the warren hurt his eyes. When he looked down, past Bunny, his face twitching, he suddenly shuddered, and clenched his fists, rubbing his eyes as if to rub away an ugly vision.

“You all right?”

Bunny loped over, poised to catch Jack. The frost spirit was weaving as if he might fall, but with a deep shuddering sigh, he righted himself, and removing his hands from his eyes, stared at the ground. “Yeah. I’m fine. I’m fine now.” He said it as if to remind himself.

“You’re not fine,” Bunny said, gruffness roughening the edges of his words. Gruffness at the injury done to Jack, but the frost spirit trembled as if it had been directed at him, and didn't look up. Bunny went on, hastily softening his tone. “Whatever Pitch put you through, it’s done now, but – look, he’s done a number onya. You don’t have to tell me you’re fine when you’re not. All right?” When Jack didn't respond, he added, “You’re safe here. I’m gonna look out for you.”

Finally Jack looked up, a wateriness in his blue eyes. “It’s safe here,” he repeated, with just the hint of a question. “You’re sure?”

“Absolutely,” Bunny said, thinking he’d kill anything that tried to make it otherwise. “My warren, my rules, remember? Nothing’s gonna hurt you here.”

He gave Jack a smile of easy confidence. Unconsciously, he was ready to hug the boy, or at least get a smile back.

But Jack just nodded and folded, down, slowly, and curled on the grass with his face buried in his arms. Bunny crouched over him, his smile faded.

Three hundred years. Three hundred years of solitude, of purposelessness, and Bunny shouting at him at the turn of every season like a criminal, and he’d still been Jack Frost. Still a spirit of joy and rebellion, and delight.

But Pitch had had him for _one day_ -

His claws bit into his pawpads as he clenched his fists, then released them. A single, terrible day could change anyone. A single terrible day had changed him, forever.

He hadn’t had anybody to help him feel like himself again on the worst day of his life, but Jack had him, and for Jack, he could be patient.

“Hey, c’mon mate,” he said, crouching down and touching Jack’s shoulder. “You’re free again. Y’wanna play a game?”

Games were always a safe bet with Jack. He peeked out from between his sleeves, but his eyes were still wary. “What kind of game?”

“Whatever kinda game you want, mate.” Bunny thought wildly. “Could be it’s about time to track the Groundhog down again, challenge him and the Leprechaun to another rugby match. We owe them a solid beating, remember? This time, we’ll make sure that paddy hoon isn’t cheating to start with.”

“I –“ Jack’s voice was hesitant. Afraid.

That touch of fear broke Bunny’s heart as much as it filled him with anger. “You what? It’s all right.”

“I don’t want to.” Jack eyed him, as if expecting anger. The boy shrank in on himself, away from Bunny’s touch, like he was expecting to be hit. Or yelled at.

“Then we won’t. That’s all right, too,” Bunny said, and Jack relaxed.

“I don’t want to play a game,” Jack added, his voice gaining confidence. Just not enough confidence for him to uncurl on himself.

“Right,” Bunny said, He dropped from his crouch to kneel. “You wanna talk about it, then?”

“No.” Jack turned over, curled up again, away from Bunny.

“It might help,” he said. “You might feel better –“

“No!” Jack clenched in on himself, as if he was trying to disappear, and he sniffled suddenly, rubbing his face in his sleeves.

Bunny sighed, but softly. Patience. He could do that. He could do that, he just had to stay vigilant about it.

“All right, mate. But when you do wanna talk, I’m here for you.” He reached out and ruffled Jack’s hair.

The reaction Jack had to that was a visceral one, his whole body tensing. If he was a cat, his fur would’ve rolled to stand entirely on end.

He slapped Bunny’s paw away with a little screech.

“Don’t do that! Don’t do that!” he cried out shrilly, practically leaping away.

Bunny stayed where he was, animal-frozen, paw still outstretched. His brows furrowed. “Do what?”

He hadn’t even registered the connection between the gesture and Jack’s panic. He always ruffled Jack’s hair.

Jack gestured vaguely at his hair.

“That. Don’t. Don’t mess with my hair.”

It took him back too much to the time he spent sitting on the floor at the side of Pitch’s throne with his hand on his hand, like he was some kind of _pet._

Bunny didn’t know that. It had become habit for him to reach out and squeeze a paw through Jack’s hair. He’d done so not a week before. Had been doing so since he and Jack had worked together to take down Old Man Winter.

_Pitch had him for one day -_

He relaxed, flicking his ears as his only allowance to his anger at Pitch. “I won’t do it then,” he promised Jack. Thinking, sighing, he flicked his ears again. “What - what do you want to do right now, Jack?” he finally asked. “What will make you feel better?”

“Nothing!” he cried out shrilly, clenching his fists and throwing his hands in the air. “I don’t know!”

He crumbled in on himself again, sitting on the ground and drawing up his knees. Then he  buried his face in them and covered his head with his hands.

Bunny reached out towards Jack again, paused, retracted his paw. “Right,” he said, uncertain, hating the feeling. “I - do you want to rest? I could go get Sandy -”

“You’re going to leave me alone?” Jack asked in a horrified voice, in a tone that rang with betrayal.

“What? No, I’ll be right back,” said Bunny. “Sandy should be just over Sri Lanka right now, it’s barely a hop away -”

At that, Jack practically dissolved into terrified gasping, his chest heaving with short, panicked breaths.

“I need to be alone but can’t you stay here?” he sobbed. “In the Warren?”

“Of course I can,” Bunny said. Jack’s obvious panic was terrible, but at least they’d landed on something he wanted. “Look, I’ll stay right here as long as you need. Just - tell me what I can do for you. I just need to know what you want.”

So he didn't go blundering into saying things that made Jack nearly have a panic attack. He still hovered awkwardly, caught between his instincts to reach out for Jack, and restraining himself for not wanting to scare Jack again.

“I need - time - to think,” Jack stammered out. “Just...stay nearby.”  

“Right.” Bunny paused, trying desperately to think of something to do that was more progressive than _nothing_. “I’ll just -” he pointed towards the dye river, but Jack was not looking. “I’ll be around. Nearby. You need me, you just shout. I’ll hear ya, right mate?"

Jack said nothing - just sucked in an audible breath through his nose and curled in on himself a little more. Bunny hesitated a moment longer before loping off, pausing a few bounds away to look back at Jack again. The frost spirit remained curled in on himself, his face pressed to the ground as much as he could make it.

Bunny loped out of Jack’s line of sight, behind a mossy boulder that stood alone in the green meadow, and was surprised to find he didn't have any more anger left to curse Pitch’s name. Seeing Jack recoil, hearing him hyperventilate with terror, had leeched the anger out of him, leaving a space for sorrow.

And fear.

* * *

Jamie had stopped being fooled after the first week Jack didn't come by to visit.

The Sandman saw the boy’s face at his window as he hovered over Burgess, sending out dreams to all but the Bennett children. Even Sophie was awake at this hour. She stood at the window with her brother, their eyes wide, not with wonder, but a desperate search for answers as they watched Sandy work, waiting for him to see and acknowledge them.

Just like they’d been waiting every night for the last few weeks.

Sandy heaved a silent little sigh as he caught the children’s eyes, thinking of the news he could give them - and not wanting to, because the news wasn't good. Even now, with Jack weeks out of the maze, he had not improved. Sandy wasn't even looking forward to the visit he’d pay in twelve hours to the warren, because he’d stopped expecting things to be any better with Jack each night there than they were the night before.

Bunny was trying. They were all trying, but Jack’s moods were dark, and his dreams, if Sandy didn't stop by nightly to help, would have been darker.

And on top of all that, the Bennett children were losing sleep, and missing out on sweet dreams. The last streams of dreamsand filtered down to the children sleeping below, and the Sandman drifted down to the two who weren't.

"Jack's not okay, is he?" Jamie said, as Sandy bobbed through the window, holding his sister's hand as they stepped back to make room for Sandy. "He acted like he was, but that was so we wouldn't worry, wasn't it?"

"I worry," Sophie put in, one knuckle against her lips, clutching a ragged, much-loved stuffed doll in the hand that wasn't holding her brother's.

Sandy put on a faint smile, trying to reassure the children. He swirled his hand, leaving a trail of dreamsand in the air that became Jack, sitting cross legged, slumped forward, but a sandy mini-fairy zipped around him, catching his attention, and an image of Bunny put his paw on the sand-Jack's back. A tiny Sandy arrived with an equally tiny Tooth, and as the little Sandman sent dreams Jack's way, he lay with his head on Tooth's lap, all the Guardians gathered around him. Taking care of him. Above them, a clock face ticked away steadily. Sandy shrugged.

"You're taking care of him, and trying to help him, but you don't know how long it will take," Jamie interpreted, as Sophie sniffed. "But where's North?"

Sandy grimaced slightly. A sand North appeared beside the other Guardians, sorting through a pile of soil while a long-nosed figure shook her fist over him. Jamie frowned. "With Baba Yaga?"

Sandy nodded, but pointed to the sand Jack.

"He's... there for Jack, too?" Jamie squinted, confused. "Where is Jack?"

Sophie removed her finger from her mouth, pointing as Sandy rippled a background around the sand Guardians. "Easter place!" she exclaimed, the worn, stuffed bunny dangling from her hand. "I went there!" she declared, looking at her brother. "I went there," she repeated, explaining to him. "To help with Easter. Jack's there?" she asked Sandy, looking to him for confirmation. The Sandman nodded, and Sophie brought her knuckle back to her lips, her little face frowning as she thought.

Finally, she looked up at Sandy and held out the hand that contained the well-loved bunny doll.

"Mr. Floop makes me feel better when I'm sad," she said. "Please take him to Jack, Mr. Sandman?"

Sandy took the toy, nodding solemnly as Sophie released it into his care, holding it like the precious thing it was. .

"Will you tell Jack we hope we feels better soon?" Jamie asked, putting his hand on Sophie's shoulder as she sidled closer to him, leaning into his side and sticking her knuckle firmly into her mouth.

Sandy nodded, as he changed his sand pictographs to an image of both Bennett children sleeping sound in their beds. He tried to give them a stern look, but in the circumstances, he was finding sternness quite difficult.

Jamie nodded, though. "We'll try. Won't we, Soph?"

"Mm-hmm," Sophie nodded.

"But please tell us how Jack is doing more often," Jamie begged, as Sandy floated to the window.

"Peese," Sophie echoed, around her hand.

Sandy pressed his lips together, nodding, and solemnly tipped a conjured hat to them before drifting through the window and back into the sky. He sent out two last dreams for each child before moving on, his eternally sunset journey carrying him across North and South America, then straight across the Pacific ocean to drop dreams on New Zealand, and Eastern Australia. He landed in the center of the Outback with the sun still over the horizon, casting a long shadow on the red earth behind the single leafless acacia tree that marked the Guardians-only entrance to the Warren.

Sandy dropped through the gap beneath the tree’s roots, waving up a haze of dreamsand to tip another hat to the sentinel egg standing at the mouth of the tunnel. It stood aside to let him pass,

Sandy emerged into the Warren on the sort of sight he had sadly become used to, one which did not match the gentle springtime air of the place, one of anxiety and - this was unusual - blood.

“Mate, just lemme have a look at it. You bit right down to the bone -”

Bunny had Jack’s hand in his paws and was gaping at Jack’s mangled, bloody thumb in disbelief. Jack was not pulling hard against Bunny’s grip, not enough to pull his hand free, anyway, but his arm was stiff with tension and he was looking around the maze like a panicked bird, his gaze flitting this way and that.

“Are you sure it was me?” he moaned, his words a wail of terror .”I thought I saw - I don’t remember biting it -”

“Jack, I saw you do it,” Bunny said, pressing the deep pits on Jack’s thumb together to slow the bleeding. “You've had your thumb in your mouth the last hour.”

“I -” Jack considered this, but his gaze still shot around the warren. He spotted Sandy, but looked him over as if he had much more important things to think about. “No. No. I wasn't - I don’t have a wall to mark. It was -  they have sharp claws, they’ll come out at night -”

“Jack,” Bunny said again, as if Jack’s name were a tether to pull him back into reality with. “There’s only you and me here,” he said. “And Sandy.” he nodded at the newly arrived Guardian. “If anything got in here besides us, I’d know. Nothing’s coming out. It’s always day in the warren, mate, remember?”

Jack trembled, like a struck dog, but his eyes settled, staring at a flower growing in the grass beside him.

“It’s almost healed,” Bunny said, as the flesh of Jack’s thumb scabbed over. “I’ll get some water to wash the blood up -”

But he had barely even turned to move away before Jack had grabbed his arm and, noiseless, clung to Bunny with all his weight.

“Or not,” Bunny added, crouching again, shooting Sandy another look. It had become a familiar look - an “I have no idea what he’s doing, or what to do about it” look.

Sandy, too, shrugged. He sent a stream of dreamsand in front of Jack’s face to get his attention, but Jack’s eyes were back on the yellow flower growing in the grass. He reached out, slowly, as if expecting an electric shock, and touched the edge of the flower. He winced as he made contact, but then, as the petal bent softly under his finger, sucked in an amazed breath.

“It’s not sharp. It doesn't cut,” he said, in words as soft as a breath. He looked away a moment, as if trying to remember something very, very old. This was the fourth or fifth time he’d marveled over flowers not cutting or biting. He jerked his face back towards Bunny and Sandy. “Did they not cut before?”

Sandy’s dreamsand became a stream of dancing Z’s in front of Jack’s eyes, pulling Jack’s gaze towards Sandy.

“Oh. It’s time to sleep?” Jack asked.

“Too right it is,” Bunny put in. Jack still hadn’t released his arm, and was hugging it to his chest, pulling Bunny at an odd angle. “Mate, can I have my hand back?”

Jack’s look of betrayal was heartbreaking. Tears welled up in his eyes and dribbled over his cheeks, though the way he took his deep, shuddering breath in made it clear he was trying not to cry. He let go of Bunny’s arm.

Overcome with remorse, Bunny reached out to brush Jack’s tears away. “Hey now, Jack, I didn't mean t’ -”

But Jack rolled over, hiding his face against the grass. “I’m tired! Just - I want - I don't know. Let me sleep.”

Sandy hastily sent another stream of dreamsand in front of his eyes, and Jack lifted his tear-stained face to look at the Sandman.

Sandy reached out to pat the boy’s hair, but Bunny caught his hand midway.

“Not his hair,” he cautioned, shaking his head. “Really.”

Sandy retracted his hand slowly, thinking, and remembered suddenly that he had a gift for Jack. He reached into the depths of the cloud of sand he was still standing on, and pulled out the over-loved rabbit doll from Sophie. An image of the little girl appeared over his head, holding the same doll out to Jack.

“Sophie asked you to give that to him?” Bunny asked. Sandy nodded. “She’s a sweet kid,” he said. “Right, Jack?”

Jack took the doll, and clutched it to his chest the way he’d been hanging onto Bunny’s arm. Tears still dripped down the boy’s face, but his body was still, his breathing quiet, and looked at the doll as if it was made of water and he was alone in a desert. Sandy let a stream of dreamsand flow into Jack’s face, and his eyes slipped shut as a little boy and girl appeared over his head, playing. It was the good dream he had most often.

With Jack asleep, Bunny picked up his bloody hand, letting out a tremendous sigh.

“He’s got scars all over his thumb,” the rabbit pronounced, wiping the blood away to look at the still-healing wound. “How did I miss this? He said something about marking the walls. We don’t scar, Sandy. We don’t scar unless the idea of a scar becomes more real than the the idea of us being whole...”

The implications of that settled on both Guardians, and for a moment they both looked at the sleeping boy, sadly.

Sandy narrowed his eyes, suddenly, pointing at the little dreamsand boy and girl. The quizzical look he cast at them caught Bunny’s attention as well.

“That’s different,” Bunny agreed. “Never seen ‘im with a spear in his dreams - no, that’s not even the same girl, is it? That’s not his sister.”

As they watched, sudden dark shapes that were not even dreamsand began to cloud around the little boy and girl. The boy crouched defensively in front of the girl, spear at the ready -

Sandy hastily waved the shadows away and cupped his hands around the vision. The shadows dissipated and the boy and girl spun, laughing, as if into the distance. The next dreamsand vision flew down slides of glacial ice at impossible, delightful speeds.

Sandy sat back. Bunny watched the dream, then glanced at him. “Any sign of Pitch yet out there?”

Sandy shook his head. Not yet.

Bunny let out an angry huff of breath, his anger softening as he looked back at Jack. “Well, keep an eye out for me,” he said. “Not that I could do anything, even if you did - there’s no way I can leave him alone for more than a minute.”

Sandy patted Bunny on the shoulder, his questioning gaze asking after more than just Jack.

“Me? Nah, I’m all right, I just can’t figure out what to do for ‘im,” Bunny said, with a sad sigh. “Can’t find something that makes him feel better without doing something that makes him two times worse,” he admitted. “It’s like navigating a forest full of snares.” he reached up with a hind paw to scratch behind his ear. “Except every time I trip one, it’s _Jack_ who gets hurt.”

Sandy winced sympathetically. A set of Easter eggs appeared in his dreamsand.

“Can’t even think about that now,” Bunny said, almost gruff. “Easter’s still seven months away. He might make some progress by then.” He paused. “The autumnal equinox, though - that’s next month. Baby Tooth is around most days. I’ll ask her to stick around and keep an eye on him. I can do the autumnal equinox in almost no time,” he said, as much to reassure himself as Sandy. “Might be a bit of a spare spring down south this year, but there’ll be other years.”

Jack moaned in his sleep, his fingers tight around the stuffed rabbit. The sliding figure in his dream had landed in front of five tall, ornate doors. Sandy waved a hand, and the doors all disappeared, leaving an open, snowy field. 

“They always go somewhere dark,” Bunny murmured, as they watched Jack’s dream.

They sat in silence for a while, as Sandy pulled Jack’s dreams away from dark doors and onto new vistas of fun. Just as he’d done every other visit he’d paid to the warren, staying long to guide Jack’s dreams away from terror, before he and Bunny could see too much of what those terrors had been.

When an hour or two had passed, Bunny put his paw on Sandy’s shoulder. “I’ll wake ‘im if they go bad again,” he said. Jack had been settled safely into a snowball fight on a hill for a good ten minutes. They didn’t need much sleep, and the children of the world still needed their dreams.

Sandy hovered, casting one last glance at Jack and wishing he could do more.

“Same here,” Bunny agreed, settling himself again at Jack’s side and watching the dream for signs of a nightmare.

But Jack slept blessedly on, his dreams staying sweet without Sandy’s hand to guide them. In the lull, Bunny looked away, hunched deep in thought.

He heard the beginnings of a moan building from Jack and jumped out of his thoughts quickly. “Jack, oi, mate.” He’d learned better than to wake Jack by shaking him without giving Jack the chance to hear him first. He put his paw on Jack’s shoulder, still talking. “Wake up. You’re still dreaming.”

Jack jerked awake, his fingers tight around the stuffed doll like he might break it. His nostrils were flared with anxiety and his eyes were wild, but when he spotted Bunny, he calmed again.

“You’re still here.” The words fell out of him, not as if he were surprised, but as if he were reassuring himself. That was good - Jack had lost a lot of his ability to reassure himself, and any sign he was getting it back gave Bunny hope.

“‘Course I’m still here. This is my home, remember?” Bunny’s tone was joking, but Jack took so much reminding of the obvious these days.

“I’m in the Warren,” Jack said. “I remember.”

He laid back down on the ground, fingers still tight around Sophie’s doll.

Bunny stayed where he was, crouched by Jack’s back, though the frost spirit had turned away from him. “How ya feeling, mate? Any better?”

“Don’t want to talk about it.” It was almost rhythmic, the way he said. He had a way of playing with words now, as if he’d put a lot of thought into different ways to babble to himself, to keep it entertaining.

Jack curled around the doll, in on himself - again. Bunny scratched his ear thoughtfully, and loped off a little ways in the silence. He returned, placing some paper and a brush beside Jack.

“You don’t have to talk about it, but you don’t have to keep it all in, either,” he said. It wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get Jack to paint his feelings, and Jack hadn't done it yet, but any time might have been the start.

“There’s nothing to keep in,” Jack said slowly, making a sincere attempt at trying to help Bunny understand. Maybe he was even just trying to figure it out for himself. “It’s that it all fell out. All of it. It fell out somewhere. In the maze. And now it’s just not there anymore.”

“You sure about that?” Bunny asked. His tone said he didn't believe it - but his tone was also probably more confident than he felt. “Nah, mate. Maybe it’s buried deep, but I’ll help you find it, right? Whatever you need to feel better, we’ll figure it out. We've got time.”

“There’s nothing to figure out,” Jack said, fingers playing with the stuffed rabbit’s ear. “And time isn't even real. You’re talking about it like it is but it’s the spaces. It’s all the silence when no one talks back. That’s what time is. It’s - it’s relative, you know?” His eyes went just a little wider, a little more distant. “Sometimes it’s the enemy.”

“That’s not how time works, mate. Trust me, I've lived a bit more of it than you. Yeah, there’s the bad stuff, but there’s always, always something decent that’s waiting. There’s a time for everything and everything in its time. The good things, they always have their time, and even when it seems like it’s not going to be any time soon, it still comes..”  

“No,” said Jack. “No, when you really need them, that’s when those things never come,” Jack said intently, as if trying to get Bunny to understand some deep truth he didn't know how to explain. “My whole life is - it’s been bad things. It’s - the good things were so small, they happened so rarely…”

He tapped his temple. “Did I ever tell you about my other two siblings? Besides Molly. It took me a while but I got most of the rest of my memories back. All different little things reminded me of the more unpleasant bits.” He went on, “My mom cried about them for sooo long I wasn't sure she’d ever stop crying. I thought it was my fault, what happened to my first little brother,” he said, staring off into the distance. 

Bunny just listened as Jack spoke, hoping that the fact he was talking was a good sign even if what he was talking about was so dark.

“She told me I was supposed to protect him and then he died. I scared her because I sneaked away in the middle of the night after the day of his funeral to go to his grave. She told me it was _my_ job as his big brother to look out for him. She explained it better later, after they found me, how no one can really protect someone from yellow fever and how lucky we were that my dad got better from it and that she and I didn't catch it. With my second little brother, it was a typhoid, but, you know, he was younger. It was a lot easier. My dad wasn't in the best shape by then so I helped him make the casket. It was so tiny.”

He held his hands in the size of a box.

“And then Molly came but I lost him and I almost forgot him, even before I lost my memories. Even now there’s just…bits. And my mom cried so much. Every so often, she’d just cry and cry. And the day we went ice skating, she told me to be careful. I told her we would. But the spring thaw came a little early - not your fault, you were just doing what you did. The Little Ice Age was letting up a little. There wasn't a winter spirit that was running around always making sure the ice was thick enough. And I didn't check - I didn't - so I just did what I could when it started to crack. And then I was no one. And I didn't even remember what it was like to have people to talk to.”

Bunny had simply let Jack let it all out, his own eyes wide and glassy.

“That’s all there is now,” he said eyes wet. “I mean there was some good along the way, sure there was, but now it’s tiny little caskets and _three hundred years alone._ ” He gestured sharply upwards, towards the real sky that was beyond the warren’s un-sky. “Three. Hundred. Years, that he wouldn't tell me _anything_. And a few years of happy things - which still involved me nearly dying once or twice. And now there’s, what, fifty plus years of...of...”

“But you can have as many more as you need, to fill with good things again, Jack. You've got a whole immortal life ahead of ya -”

“To what? To watch Jamie get old and die? For the kids to believe and then stop when they get old and cynical? And time -” Jack said, nodding to himself. “Is relative. Fifty years was a lot longer than fifty years there. It was a hundred. Some  tiny little moments, barely a second, they were a thousand years each. Because I saw Jamie die and it was my fault. And - and Manny told me it was my fault. That was a thousand right there, until I convinced myself it couldn't be real.”

“Jack -” Bunny could only breathe it out.

“You wanted me to talk about it, so I’m talking about it, and I’m telling you, there is nothing else I can fill my life with that will make it balance out. There is nothing that will make time more than something that’s just a space for more terrible things.”     

“Mate, I know you feel that way now,” Bunny breathed out, “I've been there, I've -”

“The field was thawing when you got there. You could smell them just starting to rot and their little faces were still frozen in fear.”

Bunny froze in place as Jack spoke, staring at him, slack jawed, fur bristling on end. Shocked, though - perhaps terrified - but not angry.   

“It gave me everything. It even gave me some of the things you guys fear. It let me know about some of the things that hurt the people I care about, just to rub it all in.” Jack nodded to himself. “You wanna know what I’m feeling right now? I am feeling like right now I wish I couldn't feel anything at all because it’s either all _that_ or it’s all empty. It’s just empty rooms and bad memories painted on the walls. And now I don’t wanna die or anything but I just wanna not be. I wish I could just faaade away. Like Johnny Appleseed did. Remember him?”  

Jack went on a tangent. “He was a nice guy. Always pushy with the Swedenborgianism, though.” Jack’s nostrils flared slightly. “Also pretty sexist but, you know, that was close to the best things got then. I always figured it was because he was a grown-up and so new at the not being a human thing. It’s like he didn’t understand almost everything he’d ever learned was _stupid_.”   

He trailed off, staring into the grass.

“No arguments there, mate,” said Bunny, trying to recover from the recollection Jack’s vivid description had produced, trying to hook onto a train of thought that wasn't horror until he could recover and keep from showing his own. “One time he tried to convert me, said I needed to be a good Christian rabbit to make it alright that I had Easter.” He rolled his eyes. “As if Eostre wasn't around before - “ he paused, shook his head. This was so very decidedly not the time. “But you don’t wanna be like him. Trust me, when you - when you let all the pain out, once it’s finally out, there’s going to be room for other things again. Just you wait and see -”

“I told you,” Jack said slowly, turning to stare him straight in the eyes. “There’s already nothing there.”

For just one horrifying moment, Bunny almost believed him. It was because of the blankness in his eyes. He felt like if he looked deep enough into his pupils, past the poison inked darkness of Pitch’s shadows that had grimed everything up, he’d see an empty cavern, one that could never be filled, not even with a million years hard digging. .

It was just for a moment though because Jack’s lower lip was trembling. Maybe there was a disconnect, but there was feeling there. Pain and vulnerability, probably so much that the numbness was the only thing letting him function.

If there was just some way to help him process that and let it all out…

Jack turned away and stood up, clearly wanting space now.

Bunny wanted to say more but also knew he needed to let him have. Space and time he wasn't being bombarded were the things he’d never been given in the maze.  

“I’m gonna, uh. I’m gonna go sit in a ball somewhere now,” Jack said, not even mustering the energy to lie.

“I’ll be here. I - there’s more to this Jack. I promise you. It’s a road you walk down, but you’re not walking it alone, right? But we can talk more later.“

Jack just nodded again, with a total lack of sincerity, as he walked away, leaving Bunny alone to ruminate on tiny caskets and thawing ice in near-dead fields, and how the nature of anger meant that even though it was easily snuffed out by sadness, it could just as easily be stoked again into a roaring fire.

Nearby, a piece of chalk lay on a flat stone. Equations and shorthand half-covered the stone, the equations nonsensical by the standards of mortal arithmetic, the shorthand illegible to anyone who wasn’t Bunny.

He picked up the chalk and continued the notes, one of his ears swiveled in Jack’s direction as he focused.

He didn't know how to help Jack just then, and he didn't know how to kill Pitch Black either - but he could work on both problems at once.

* * *

North counted the days by the sounds of the riders zooming by. The white, red, and black-garbed riders who passed morning, noon, and night made their rounds by the hut every day, but not until recently had any of them stopped to help the Cossack in the witch’s keep.

The white rider had paused days earlier, perhaps weeks, when Baba Yaga had put North to the task of sorting poppy seeds from soil. Though the rider’s tennis shorts and polo shirt were as pure white as the vespa he zipped by on every dawn, he sat in the soil with North and sorted the tiny black seeds from the clinging black dirt, faster even than North with his nimble, toymaker’s fingers.

Today the red rider had stopped with the noontime sun overhead. North sat cheerfully beside two piles of sorted corn when Baba Yaga returned from her flight, one rotten and festering, the other golden and delicious.

“I see you had a visitor,” Baba Yaga scowled, frowning at the piles of corn and the skidmarks the rider of the sun’s cherry red convertible had left in the turf.

North cheerfully slapped his thigh. “The morning rider and the noonday rider have shown their approval, haha! It will not be long that you still have the use of me, Babushka!”

“Oh, yes, you’ve heard stories,” Baba Yaga rolled her eyes. “You’re very smart. Now shut up.”

North did not, of course. He rose to his feet, beaming. “And none too soon, can the midnight rider come. I cannot wait to see Jack again. It is a sad thing, Babushka, to see a broken friend, especially one so precious as Jack.” His smile had dimmed just a little in the remembering, but his joviality was still there. “Still, to see him returned to himself will be all the more joyful! I wonder, how will he have progressed when next I see him?”

Baba Yaga spat. “What a fool you are,” she said, her voice flat, as if he were such a fool she couldn’t even summon anything more potent than disdain to respond to him with. “I suppose if someone asked you what was the swiftest thing in the world, you would give some fool answer like one of your reindeer, yes? And for the fattest, hah, you might even say yourself.”

The question caught North, as he reached down to sort one last kernel of corn. He paused with the golden grain in his hand, remembering.

“The cold north wind,” he said, looking up from the corn, distantly into the forest. “The cold north wind is the swiftest thing in the world. The fattest, the rich land from which the people grow their crops. The softest thing in the world is a child’s caress, the most precious, honesty.”

He sighed.

“The wisest thing in the world -”

“- was certainly not you,” Baba Yaga finished for him . “Maybe if you had kept that wise wife of yours, you would not be in the scrape you’re now in, and you’d be back in the world to see your Frost Spirit’s progress -” it seemed the old witch had been out keeping an updated knowledge of the ways of the world, because she put the word “progress” in airquotes - “and not here, a slave to Babushka!” She cackled, and strode past North, right through the two mounds of corn, mixing the rotten with the clean again. “Look at this mess, idiot! Have you been daydreaming all day, or is there a single kernel of corn ready for my dinner? Do you want Babushka to starve? Because I assure you, that will not happen, even if I have to eat you myself! The corn had better be ready by the time I’m back! My little Vasilisa would already have had the water boiling, but then, she married below her wits, as we all can clearly see.”

* * *

The days came and went as North toiled, as Sandy and Baby Tooth came and went from the warren, carrying the season along with them, until the autumn equinox had come again.

Bunny couldn't ignore it, any more than he could ignore that Jack was still in terrible shape. But at least this terrible shape didn't begin to weep despondently every time he looked up from staring blankly into the grass, and immediately see Bunny or Baby Tooth.

"You're leaving," Jack repeated, as Baby Tooth buzzed anxiously by his face, and Bunny crouched beside him, trying not to let any of his anxiety show.

"It's the equinox, mate, I gotta do it. You know that. Twice a year, every year. The autumnal's a load easier than the vernal. There's a lot less land in the south to bring spring to. Remember?"

Jack said nothing, but the nothing wasn't wailing, and that was better than he had been.

Still, Bunny's gut was clenched with discomfort. "It's just a quick run around the world, and I'll be back," he promised. "Baby Tooth'll be with you the whole time, isn't that right?"

Baby Tooth nodded enthusiastically, her gold crest bobbing and her chirps as bright and cheerful as she could make them, in the circumstance.

Jack looked distrustfully at Bunny. He was wringing Sophie's stuffed rabbit doll anxiously in his hands, but when he spoke, he said, "You'll be back?"

"In a flash," Bunny reassured him. "I wouldn't even go if I didn't have to. You know that, right?"

Jack dropped his gaze, eyes unfocused, the grip on Sophie's stuffed doll slackening.

"You'll be back," he repeated, and, as if he were falling slowly, folded up and lay on the ground again.

Bunny looked at Baby Tooth. "I think this is the best we're gonna get right now," he said. "If something happens -" he shook his head. "Nothing's gonna happen. Just don't leave him, right? I'll be right back."

Baby Tooth nodded, her cheerful facade dropped for Bunny. He nodded back to her, cast one more worried look at Jack, and bolted from the warren, so fast that the grass rippled in a wave in his wake.

Baby Tooth buzzed near Jack's ear, settling finally on the grass in front of him, her little gaze locked on Jack's unfocused, glassy eyes.

A moment passed before Jack's eyes focused on Baby Tooth.

"Bunny went away," Jack said to her, as if to remind himself. As if she'd only just come to visit, and hadn't been there to see him go. "But he said he'd be back. He said he'd be back -"

There was doubt in his words, though. Baby Tooth chirped at him, reassuring and cheerful, but his eyes rolled up, away, and Jack stared blankly past the little Tooth Fairy as the seconds of the new autumn ticked by.

* * *

The final night had come at last. The iron witch had demanded the number of stars in the night sky. North sat on the roof of the chicken-footed hut, eyes on the deep blue sky, idly playing at counting the impossible brightness of the stars in the deep, wild sky.

He did not actually need to count all the stars in the sky - not that he wouldn’t have tried, if he hadn’t already known this story. The midnight rider would come soon, as had the morning and the noon, and give him the count.

Any moment now. He would hear the growl of the huge black truck the midnight rider had years ago exchanged his horse for, and the man would stop to help him with the final task Baba Yaga had set. The final test to prove he was pure of spirit, in harmony with the earth and nature, worthy of freedom from the old witch’s tests.

Worthy to return to Jack. Bunny would surely be ready for a break from caring for the boy, unless the boy no longer needed care. Jack was a resilient little spirit. He had shown them all this by enduring 300 years of purposelessness, loneliness.

Yes, by now he would be ready to leave the eternal spring of the Warren, to finish his recovery at the Pole, among the mischievous elves and the yetis who would surely be so delighted to see him again (perhaps a little less than delighted, once Jack began leading the elves in a more organized mischief in and out of their work). North could hardly contain his delight to think of the fun they would get up with, with Jack as a guest in his home, a perfect playplace for a winter spirit remembering how to play again.

As soon as the midnight rider arrived.

As he would arrive. Surely.

North’s gleeful anticipation cooled as slowly as a lake freezing over, as the night went on, and no growl of a diesel engine intruded on the rustle of the wind in the trees. Midnight had long since passed, but the rider had not.

North, tight-lipped, had begun to count the stars in earnest.

“You thought it would be that easy,” an old voice croaked from the darkness. Baba Yaga’s long nose sliced into the light, leading the rest of her face. “Already you made the mistake of thinking this would be easy as a story, and still - you believed.”

North reached for his hip, remembering as he did that there were no swords there. His belt was empty.

Baba Yaga watched the movement, her eyes half-lidded. “Ah. You see now? Here you are - weaponless, coming up on the wrong side of an oath - and an old, iron witch to contend with.” Her eyes were hard, and terrible, and fearless, though she was old, and North, even weaponless, was so big and strong.

“My arms are thin,” she said, “But I am wiry. You are right to worry just how much strength is in them.”

“This has gone on long enough,” said North, his voice as calm as the old witch’s. “A deal is a deal, Babushka, but even your oath does not give you this much leeway. I do not have to lie down and let you eat me.”

His stance was tense, prepared for a fight. But Baba Yaga only eyed him for a moment longer, then laughed.

“I’m not going to eat you, young fool. Scoot over and let Babushka sit.”

She plopped down on the roof beside him, patting the shingles when North did not immediately sit. Finally, he took a place next to her.

“Do you know why I wanted you here?” asked the old witch. “Is the answer rattling around in that sieve you call a skull, or has it fallen out entirely? Ah, but you have tested my patience!” Baba Yaga exclaimed, before North could suggest a reason.

“My reputation,” he said, when he could get a word in. “Babushka, you said as much when I came for your help -”

“Your reputation,” Baba Yaga sneered, “it would be a waste of my time to test that. You were a thief once, yes, we all know this, and now you do the reverse of what you have done - you give treasures instead of taking them. We have all seen this! We all know this. And for the children, they say, you will do anything - that, too, I have seen! That too, I already knew! Look at how quickly you gave your freedom for your little frost friend. That is what else I know. You are old, by many standards, but you are still young. Even you. And you’re still an arrogant young fool.”

If she had said he _had been_ arrogant and foolish, North would have laughed and agreed with her.

“Babushka,” he said, politely biting his temper, “I -”

“You took on impossible tasks -” Baba Yaga began. North cut her off with a  laugh.

“Impossible tasks are my sport, Babushka! The tasks I have done -”

“Oh? Your sport?” Baba Yaga echoed, her tone mocking. “then count them!” she pointed to the sky, sparkling black above them. “Count every star before morning. You have tried already, have you not?”

North thought of the midnight rider, who should have brought him the number, his brow furrowed with an edge of worry. The midnight rider was not coming, that much was clear. It was up to him.

He lifted his finger to point out the stars, mumbling the count under his breath. Baba Yaga’s harsh laughter stole the number from his mind.

“You cannot,” she barked. “You may try until the sun comes up, but you will not count the stars.”

“We shall see,” said North, terse, as he began his count again.

“And even if you thought you had counted them, you would have the number wrong,” Baba Yaga went on. “You would have missed a star, or counted one twice. Or two twice, or a hundred. That is the point, young fool. You cannot count the stars in the night sky. You are in harmony with heaven and earth, and if I had not stopped my midnight rider, he would have brought you the number - but that is the point. That is the _lesson_ , Nicholas Saint North.”

“If the count of stars is what it will take to get back to Jack -” North began.

Baba Yaga hit him, a ringing grandmother’s blow to the back of his head that made his brains rattle and knocked the number from his mind.  “You will listen to Babushka or you will leave here a bigger fool than you came,” she snapped, real anger in her voice. “You want to return to your snowflake? You want to help him become whole again? Then _learn the lesson I am teaching you_ \- some tasks cannot be done.”

North rubbed the back of his head, an unfamiliar edge of frustration sawing at his temper. “I have not become the legend I am by backing away from a thing because it was difficult,” he said.

“And that is what all the things you have done have been,” said Baba Yaga - “difficult. Reaching the bottom of the sea, stealing the giant’s gold, visiting each child in one night - these things are difficult. But for you, not impossible. Even mortals have done some of these things by now. You are unmatched when it comes to conquering tasks so difficult people would call them impossible, but tell me - if you had completed my tasks, if you were leaving to return to your snowflake by now, what would you want? What would you hope to do?”

North paused a moment, caught by the question. “Heal him,” he said, finally. “Help him become the boy he was again.”

“How?”

“By any means necessary.”

“ _How?_ ” the old witch pressed. “How, you great oaf, who has done so many things that lesser men would call impossible, but who has never had to untangle the mess of a damaged mind? Tell me how you will do this! Be specific!”

For a second, North groped for an answer, but closed his mouth as none came.

“I will tell you how,” said Baba Yaga. “Listen.”

North leaned in to hear.

“You won’t,” she said. Her words fell like stones on his ears. “You will not have the boy Jack Frost back. That boy who went into the maze, you will never see again.”

“That is not good enough!” North thundered, leaping to his feet. “You speak of surrender and - and lying down and giving up, and perhaps some tasks may not be accomplished, but I will never sit by and not challenge them!”

“No, you idiot, I have said nothing about giving up!” Baba Yaga’s voice snapped through the cold night like ice hardening. “Listen to me, and not to your pride. You put yourself in my debt, because you thought you knew my story - you knew I would test your purity of heart, test your nobility of spirit, and you thought, ‘These are things I have. The old witch will not surprise me.’ Well I have surprised you. I stopped the midnight rider from bringing you the number of stars in the sky, even though you deserved his help. Do you know why yet?“

When North did not reply, she went on. “Because purity of heart and nobility of spirit will get you through much, but sometimes, they are not enough.” She raised her eyebrows, deepening the wrinkles on her forehead while revealing more of her cold grey eyes to glitter in the starlight. “You did not think, when you threw yourself in my debt, that your frost spirit might need you after he had been saved. You did not stop to consider that he might be too damaged to leave alone. What if you did not have those friends of yours? What if this story had happened earlier, and your Guardian of Hope and your Guardian of Fun did not love each other yet? Your memory-keeper and your dreamweaver are too busy to nurture a wounded soul. Your spider is too harsh. And you? You are _bullheaded and in my debt!_ But you did not consider these things! You only considered that you knew my story - _one_  story - and that you are Nicholas St. North, doer of impossible things. Pah!” Baba Yaga spat off her roof. “There is for your reputation! There is for your impossible things! You have done difficult things in plenty, but you have never done anything so impossible mortals will not one day do them, and more. But I tell you - no mortal will ever resurrect the person your Jack Frost was before he was hurt so deeply as this. And neither will you. You will not succeed at the task you set out to accomplish - you will not have success on your terms. But that does not mean there is not success to be had.”

Her lacerations had touched nerves, and North felt suddenly like the child he had not been in years, learning at a mortal crone’s knee, as he never had in his childhood.

“There is a story you must hear,” Baba Yaga said, to his silence. “Yes another, but this one you have not heard from one who was in it. Once, a great war swept across many nations. Men died horribly in this war, and women, and children.” she ground her iron teeth together as North’s shoulders sloped, as if beneath a weight. “And when the war was over, a man returned to his home, and to the loving wife who had waited for him.

“The man who returned home was not the kind, gentle husband his wife had married. This man was cold and gruff, distant, and unloving. When his wife tried to ply him with love and gentleness, he turned her away, leaving her feeling quite as alone as she had when he was away at war.

“The woman went to a witch, and asked for a potion to cure her husband. She did not make your mistake of asking for the man she’d married back - she only asked for a potion that would warm her husband’s heart, soften his countenance, and make him respond to her love in kind again. ‘I will make you this potion,’ the witch told her, ‘but you must gather the ingredients. One is very difficult and dangerous to get. You must climb the mountain outside the village, to the den at the very peak where there lives a great bear with a patch of white at his throat. You must bring me a hair from that pure white patch, for without it, your husband will never be cured.”

“The woman said, ‘I am not afraid,’ even though she was. For her husband, she would do anything. She left for the mountain immediately.

“The climb was long, and left her winded and tired. When she reached the top, the bear’s den opened before her like a dark gate to hell, and the growls from within turned her bones to glass and her blood to ice. The beast inside snarled at her, but she thought of her husband, and strengthened by her love, she stood her ground. She had brought food with her, delicious food such as a loving wife makes for her beloved, and she set it at the mouth of the cave, backing away. The bear snarled, and ate, and returned to his cave to sleep. The woman thought to creep inside to pluck her prize, but each time she drew closer to the cavern, the bear growled louder and louder, rousing for his sleep to roar her away. She retreated to the edge of the mountain. She did this for _days_.

“But each day, the bear made her retreat a little less far. Each day, the growls were a whisper softer, as if the bear were becoming accustomed to her presence. Finally, it happened that the woman set her food down, and the bear ate it before her, without a noise at her presence. It was at this point that the woman put her plea forth to the bear. Though it was a crass and cruel old creature, it was too used to the woman not to listen to her voice, and even the angry old thing was touched by the woman’s love. But a bear, an old and solitary male, has softness to spare only for itself, and it knew this! Ah, _you_ know something of bears,” said Baba Yaga, elbowing North sharply with her bony elbow. “ _You_ know the male bears, their ferocity and their selfishness, born of need for no one and nothing but what they can kill and eat. So the bear said to the woman - ‘You are kind, and patient, so I will be as patient as I am able, but that is not much! You may pluck one hair from my neck, but once you have done so, the pain will be so much that I will go out of my mind with anger and attack you! Pluck, woman, but be ready to run!’ and so saying, the bear exposed its throat, the long brown hair bearing a single white patch.

“The woman did not wait! She snatched white hair from the bear’s throat! She ran, with its teeth at her heels and its roar in her ears, nearly falling down the mountain in her haste to get away! When the bear had tired of its chase, she was already hurt and weary, but she continued on her way with her prize in her hand, until she came to the witch’s cottage, with its chicken feet and its many-locked door, and the old witch waiting at the window for her.

“‘I have done what I had to do,’ spoke the woman, dirty and bleeding from her flight, tired and hungry from days of giving her best food to a wild animal, not sleeping lest she become its food herself. The old witch saw that she had, and let her in. ‘And now,’ asked the desperate woman, ‘will you make the potion to cure my husband?’

“‘Did I not send you to the bear for that very purpose?’ asked the witch, as she threw the precious white hairs into the fire.

“The woman screamed as they burned all up, and would have grasped the very fire to retrieve them if there was anything left to retrieve! ‘Why?’ she cried to the cruel witch. ‘What about my potion? What about my husband?’

“The witch said to her, ‘Go home now, and treat your husband with all the patience and all of the courage with which you treated the bear.”

“Your frost spirit,” Baba Yaga said, when the sun had pinked the sky, and the stars had all winked out, “will never be the same. You may help him heal - but not by pretending that you can have him as he once was.”

North sat beside her, silent and thoughtful, his eyes darker and deeper than when he first came to the old witch.

“So what will you do now, North of the Impossible tasks? Continue to insist you will bring the old Jack back? Or approach this new Jack with patience and courage, as the woman approached the bear?”

At length, North spoke, his face lined with resignation and thought. “You say that to help Jack, we must be patient with him. We must help him to overcome the hurt that has been done to him, and arise from that hurt, new, changed, and strong.”

“That is what I say,” Baba Yaga agreed, nodding.

North nodded with her. “Babushka, I have made many mistakes. Now I see that.” Baba Yaga smiled thinly, but with satisfaction. “But I have done one thing right. I left him with the right Guardian.”

* * *

Jack forgot how long Bunny had been gone.

It didn't help that the light in the Warren never changed. It was never night, or twilight, but always the dawn of morning. It was the dawn of morning when Bunny had left, and it would be the dawn of morning when he returned. If he returned. What if he did not?

The maze had been always the same time as well. The only difference from the warren was that the maze had never been beautiful. Or, no, it had only rarely been beautiful - and even that had been a lie to keep him going just long enough that his despair was that much deeper, when the beauty had fled.

What if Bunny didn't come back?

Jack felt the scream welling up inside him long before it ripped its way out of his throat.The wind wasn’t something he meant to call up, but there it was, scattering leaves and ripping branches, still green inside with the life they’d had before he’d broken them. Some of the flowers were shredded but many others froze solid, made as beautiful by the glittering ice that covered them as they were made lifeless.

He stopped, suddenly, the sound of his own screams frightening him, gasping deeply. Something might hear, come, and hurt him - but when seconds ticked by and nothing did, Jack felt the scream welling up in him again. It hurt more to keep in than to let out, and wind whipped through the evergreens, tearing up bluebells and sending them flying along with sprays of snow. Bunny’d said he’d come back, but he hadn't, and Jack was alone again, alone -

Baby Tooth’s panicked chirps broke through Jack’s scream, when he finally felt her little tugs on the strings of his hoodie, he finally let the scream die. As Baby Tooth pressed her tiny hands against his cheek, chirping madly, he looked at her with wonder. He wasn’t alone - he’d just forgotten she was there. He felt bad, instantly. She was tiny, but she was his friend, and he’d forgotten her. Just like Bunny had forgotten him -

The freeze solidified with a snap. Jack felt the snow piling at his feet, falling on his shoulders, and the ice settling deep, deep into the rich soil.The patch of the Warren around Jack, easily the size of a football field, was as empty of life as Jack often felt.  

Baby Tooth touched Jack’s face with tiny, gentle hands, but his eyes saw only the ice and snow covering - killing - the green of Bunny’s home.

The breath he heaved in was thick with terror. His panic began, much like a small child might after they knocked over their mother’s favorite vase on the fireplace. (Specifically, the one that had grandma in it.)

“No! Nononononono,” he yelled shrilly, tears welling in his eyes as he dropped to his knees and picked up a wilted flower, the petals mostly battered off by the wind.

Baby Tooth looked back and forth between the snowed-over section of the warren and Jack panicking in the snow. There was no question the plants in the ice were dead, but they were plants, and Jack was Jack. She zipped in front of him, chirping for his attention, holding out her hands, trying to touch his face in comfort.

But she was so small and so easy to overlook twice in a panic.

“Noo, nooo, what’s wrong with me, what’s wrong with me?” Jack dropped the flower and clawed at his face, beating at his head with his fists. “Stupid. Stupid stupid stupid…”

At that, watching him beating himself up, Baby Tooth finally burst loudly and noisily into tears. That cut through Jack’s panic. He turned his tearstained face to the crying fairy, and reached up to comfort her.

“Ssh, no, it’s okay. Don’t cry. I’m sorry,” he said gently, taking her into his hands. “I’m sorry. It’s okay.” He held her up to his face, nuzzling her with his cheek. “Please don’t cry.”

She was warm, like a little living jewel against his face, and she stopped crying, patting his cheek and chirping the saddest, most concerned sounds he’d ever heard.

“Please don’t cry,” Jack repeated. He could hear her tiny, fast-beating heart, pounding louder and louder -

No. Those were footsteps. Bunny skidded to a stop out of the South America tunnel, the sound of his footfalls still catching up to him and a breeze bending the grass in the warren, he’d run in so fast. “Jack! Are you -”

He stopped as he saw the frozen patch of his home, mouth hanging open in shock and what had to be horror. He stood there without reacting, paws limp at his side, taking in the ice and snow in deep, stunned silence.

When he did move, his gaze swept, very briefly, over Jack. Then he reached up to cover his face, shoulders shaking, as if to contain his temper.

Jack’s eyes went wide and he let go of Baby Tooth, leaving her to hover in the air. Scurrying back, he grabbed his staff and stood up, holding it tight in his hands in front of him, like a child might hold on to their favorite stuffed animal for comfort.

But the ragged breath Bunny drew in wasn’t one of anger. It was a sob - repressed, contained, and he swallowed it before looking at Jack again. “Jack - what is this?”

“I’m sorry.” Jack’s  voice was raspy and thin. “I didn’t mean to.”

It was too much. He couldn’t fix this.

He backed away and took to the air, flying away as fast as he could. He couldn’t leave the Warren because it wasn’t safe outside and the paralyzing fear of leaving the only place he felt safe would not leave him anytime soon, but there were places to hide, mossy little caves, little nooks and crannies, places where roots created little hollows of silence and shade.  

The problem with running was that there was no hideaway in the warren that Jack had found that Bunny hadn’t already known about for centuries.

He had barely hidden at all before Bunny had tracked him down, loping easily across well-known landscape.

“I told you I was going to be right back,” said Bunny, crouching by Jack’s little cave between two mossy stones. “Don’t you remember?”

Any minute now, the terror in Jack’s heart said that the anger was going to cut through his tone, the anger was going to surface. He’d frozen the warren. He’d seen the dead pookas, run through the melting field. He knew what it meant that he’d frozen it again.

His weeping rose to terrified, guilty sobs. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” he wept, hysterics sucking the breath from his lungs. “I forgot - I got scared. I didn’t mean to - I’m sorry!”

The anger was coming, Jack knew - it had to, because he’d made Bunny angry so many times and it had always been to do with imposing winter over spring, and he had never done that more intimately than now.

After all the pain he’d gone through proving he wasn’t as bad as Old Man Winter, he’d ruined it all. Bunny would be angry at him, soon. No matter what he said. And he’d have to go out in the world, where it wasn’t safe, without Bunny’s protection, and that would be almost as bad as going without his friendship.

Jack sucked in ragged, terrified breath after breath, and Bunny sat back on his heels, slouched, his expression confused, and so far from anger - not that Jack could see, the way that Jack was curled in on himself, cringing as if he expected a blow that he would have to defend himself from.

“I’m at my wits end, mate,” Bunny said, without any of the anger Jack expected. “I don’t - I know I’m not helping you, and I wish I knew how I could, but -” he sighed, again. He was doing that so often lately. “You know I have to do my work. I want to help you, and I can’t take you, but if I can’t leave you here - _why_ , Jack? What are you afraid of?”

Jack’s sobs had been quieting, as he strained to hear Bunny’s voice, but the last question echoed in Pitch’s voice. He could suddenly _feel_ the fingers pulling his hair. _“Tell me what you’re afraid of now, Jack.”_

His sob turned into screams and he curled away, pressed against the stone of the hollow, sobbing like the only thing that existed in the world was his terror.

Bunny’s heart dropped. He looked at Baby Tooth with a desperate expression as she zipped over, zigzagging with agitation, her tears flowing as steadily as Jack’s, helpless to give him insight.

 _What did I say?_ he wondered, as his best friend wailed in the dirt like he’d done the last time - probably the last time ever - Bunny had ruffled his hair.

But Jack’s sobs were resolving into words. “Don’t make me,” he sobbed. “I’m sorry, please don’t make me tell - please don’t be mad. I’ll be good, I promise I’ll be good!”

Tears poured down his face. Snot dripped from his nose, and clenched so tightly in his hands that the seams were almost ripping, was the doll Sophie had given him. The doll he’d been keeping in the pocket of his hoodie. His other hand was pressed against his mouth - in between words, he gnawed his fingers, spittle dripping down it.  

Huddled in the hollow beneath the great oak, gnawing his hand and clutching his toy, Jack looked less like a trapped animal, and much more like -

Bunny sat back. Finally, understanding wiped the confusion from his face.

 _Ah_ , he thought, and just as suddenly as he’d understood, felt tears rising in his eyes. He breathed deeply, settling himself before they had a chance to well up.

When he spoke again, his voice was as calm as if Jack had never begun crying at all.

“All right, that’s enough of that. It’s time to calm down now.”

Jack’s sobs continued. Bunny waited.

When nothing happened to interrupt his crying, Jack’s sobs slowed, and he peeked through his hands to see Bunny still crouched in place, relaxed, his ears twitching forward as he caught Jack’s eye.

“C’mon, take a breather,” he said, in a low, soothing voice that Jack needed to stop crying to hear. Jack did, but his breathing was still shallow and ragged. Bunny moved only to pat his thick-furred chest softly. “Whatever it is, you need to let it out, let it out here, all right? I’m here for ya.”

He held out his arms in invitation.

Jack was frozen, staring in disbelief, as if waiting for the trick to be revealed, like a child waiting to be hit. The thought of the comparison made Bunny swallow back a few more tears. He covered them with a smile, gentle in the face of Jack’s misery.

“C’mon,” he said.All the calm authority in the world pressed into his voice. “It’s time to calm down now.”

Slowly, his face still stained with uncertainty, Jack uncurled inch by inch. He crept from the hollow, hesitant, as he obeyed the order, and crawled into Bunny’s open arms. For a moment, Jack stayed huddled into a protective ball, Sophie’s doll clutched in his hands, even as Bunny put his arms around Jack, hugging him close.

When the tension began to leave Jack’s body, it did so in small surges. He leaned a tearstained face against Bunny’s chest, gripping his fur tightly with the arm that was still clutching the doll. He kept gnawing on the fingers of his other hand.  

“I’ll be good,” he promised in between gnawing, desperation still thick on his voice. “No more snow.”

“Ah,” Bunny shrugged unconcerned. “A little snow never hurt anybody. Stick to ‘no snow in the warren when Bunny’s not around,’ and she’ll be right.”

“Okay,” Jack promised, nestling his cheek against Bunny’s fur. “Okay.”

“I’ll make a place you can let some snow out,” Bunny went on. “All this spring must be gettin’ to ya. No worries. I’ll get some things in order - the right trees around the right spot, you can let out plenty of snow when y’need to -”

“I said I didn’t mean to,” Jack said, his voice high and now even a little screechy. “You _left_ me.”   

“Now I told you I was coming back,” Bunny said, drawing away just enough to look Jack in the eye - but Jack kept his face firmly pressed into Bunny’s fur. “Look at me, Jack,” he said, with the same calm authority. Jack peeked up, just enough to obey. “I would never, ever lie to you. Got that? I will always come back for you. Because I love ya, very much. Do you understand that?”

Jack didn’t say anything. Tears welled higher in his eyes as his head spun with the words. Bunny said them so easily that it physically pained Jack to hear it.

The frost spirit buried his entire face in Bunny’s fur again.

“But I was bad,” he said, his voice muffled.

“You’re not bad,” Bunny insisted. “You’re upset. It’s all right. I can tell the difference.” He tried to draw back, to look Jack in the eye, but Jack wasn’t done hiding his face.

“But if I was bad,” Jack insisted, “You’d still love me? If I made you mad?” His voice was still muffled. “Are you sure?”

“‘Course I would.” Bunny tucked Jack in closer, rocking him gently. “You’re -” he had to pause a moment, to determine exactly what label he was going to put on Jack just then. “You’re my family, Jack. Nothing could make that not true.”

Jack finally drew back to look up at Bunny on his own.

His eyes were unfocused, teary, and he let out gurgling laughter that was almost as off-kilter as it was delighted.

“You love me,” he said, “And you’d never...never leave me alone forever? Even if you were really mad at me?”

“Never in a million years,” Bunny said, smiling at him. “And you know I’m telling the truth, because you and me, we’re gonna live to see that, right?”

Jack’s smile was nearly deranged, tears flooding his cheeks again.

It was love without edges to it. That existed. He’d forgotten what that was like.

He curled up even closer to Bunny than before, as if he would have crawled inside his ribcage right up next to his heart if there’d been room, and threaded both hands into his fur, the doll held tightly at the crook of Jack’s elbow.

Baby Tooth flitted over, pushing a hand through Jack’s hair and looking at Bunny with all the worry her tiny face could muster.

Bunny put on a brave face for Jack, smiling and leaning over to touch his nose to Jack’s forehead in a reassuring brush. But there was as much worry in his expression as he returned Baby Tooth’s glance, as he wrapped his arms around Jack and rocked him like the child he was acting.

Pitch had practically ripped through Jack’s skin down to the core. He’d wrenched out his inner child only to chain it to himself and that meant Bunny needed to start over from the beginning. He had a child to comfort now, a child to nurture and help reconnect with the world, a child to teach to not be afraid, as the Guardians did.

It was an impossible task and he was not the one who did the impossible with relish - that was North - but he took the impossible on like the burden it so often was. He knew what to do now and maybe that would make all the difference.  

* * *

In another cave, one dark and sandy, Anansi brooded before two lines of story, each as thin as a breath of fog, shimmering in the scant moonlight that filtered through the cracks in his lair, threatening to break apart on each new draft.

When each web suddenly thickened, the spider sagged to the floor of the cavern, his relief as clear as a sigh.

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long delay! Life got in the way. 
> 
> The lyrics referenced in this chapter are from “All the World and I,” by Elana James.

 

Twilight came over the Pacific and touched the edge of Australia. The Sandman floated at its edge, hurrying to reach Jack before night did.

He arrived in the Warren to see Jack already asleep, cradled in Bunny’s lap and clinging to his fur with white knuckles. If his grip was too tight, no sign showed on Bunny’s face. He looked very solemn and very sad.

The Sandman had a hand full of dreamsand ready as he approached the pair, realizing before Bunny spoke that it was probably needed.

“I figured it out,” Bunny said, softly, so as not to wake the frost spirit still sleeping in his arms. The last of the tension on Jack’s face cleared as Sandy sent a stream of dreamsand over to sweeten his dreams, his fingers relaxing their grip on Bunny’s fur, but even so, Bunny didn’t put him down. “Took me long enough, but I got the message.”

Sandy looked at him with one of the quizzical expressions that spoke so much without a word.

“He was throwing a tantrum,” Bunny said, still rocking Jack even as he drifted into dreamless, deep sleep. “Like a child. Exactly like a scared kid.”

Dismay settled over Sandy’s face. He lowered his hand as the last of the dreamsand did its work, waiting for Bunny to continue.

But Bunny was silent a little too long, his expression set and stoic, an expression almost, but not quite, the sort of anger that Sandy had seen Bunny hold onto before, the anger that he used when he had grief that needed to be kept at bay.

But they couldn’t sit in silence forever. Sandy put his hand on Bunny’s forearm, and Bunny looked up from Jack’s sleeping face, just a little of the grief shining through. Tiny gold footprints walked across the space above Sandy’s head. They needed to take a next step.

“Someone’s got to tell the others,” Bunny said. The someone, obviously Sandy, nodded, but the question still in his expression was _what am I supposed to tell them?_ Bunny looked back at Jack, grief neatly tucked away again where it couldn’t immobilize him. “Tell ‘em - we knew Pitch tried to make him like a child of his. Obviously, he didn’t get what he wanted...but I think he got a lot closer than we thought. Pitch tried to strip him down, do away with some of the parts that made him Jack, and I think he - got some of him after all.”

He broke off and the dismay on Sandy’s face deepened.

“We have to consider that we might never get those pieces back.” The words left Bunny slowly, as if they weren’t meant to be spoken by the Guardian of Hope.

Another brief silence followed.

Sandy touched Bunny’s forearm again. He caught the rabbit’s eye, to make clear his understanding of the grief Bunny was not letting himself feel.

“He was like a little brother to me,” Bunny said, a thin stream of his anger at Pitch sliding through and adding a shudder to his words. “He was - he was what I needed, what I - the winter that _recreated,_ I never even thought winter could be...all of _nature_ needed him, just as he was, and Pitch -” he nearly choked on the awfulness of his own words. “Pitch _broke him._ ”

Was it fury or horror or grief that was thickest in his whispered snarl? The Sandman couldn’t say.

He could have said, though, that this was not the only facet of grief he would see in his friends before the night was out.

It was enough grief let out in the presence of a friend for Bunnymund to lock back onto target. He had a duty to attend to. He settled, no break in his voice, hackles settling as he went on holding Jack. “So we do what works. Not what we want to work. If we’re not getting our friend back, if that’s just not in the cards - I can take care of a kid again. I’m not that rusty. Tell ‘em that’s what we might be doing. For - for however long it takes. And if it takes forever - if there’s no end date -”

 _If there’s no hope,_ he absolutely would not say.

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

It was. Sandy nodded once in agreement.

“Baby Tooth went back to the Palace,” Bunny mentioned. “Y’might wanna go to Toothiana first.”

Her heartbreak would have its own particular facet. Sandy and Bunny exchanged a look, already sympathetic to her.

The Sandman patted Jack’s cheek, leaving a little more golden dust on his skin, and floated off to deliver the sad news.

* * *

Sandy arrived at Punjam Hy Loo shortly after Baby Tooth. She was jabbering to Tooth, who seemed confused by what she understood from the little fairy.

As soon as she spotted Sandy, Tooth fluttered over, wings humming, his expression concerned.

“Oh good, Sandy, it’s you! Have you been to the warren to see Jack? Baby Tooth was trying to tell me how he is, but what she says, it - I must be understanding it wrong.”

Sandy winced, looked at Baby Tooth, and back at Toothiana, still wincing his “probably not” wince.

The gravity of that settled on Tooth as she asked, “What do you mean? How bad is he?”

Sandy looked at Baby Tooth, considering how to answer. He took his time, swirling up sand to depict Jack on his knees, curled up, covering his face with his hands before collapsing to the ground. A sand Bunny hopped over and picked Jack up, cradling him like a child while sand Jack shook.

Tooth’s reaction was to stare at Sandy with eyes starting to glisten with tears and then she briefly held a hand over her mouth, as she tried to control her emotions enough to ask more questions.

“Is it helping at least? Being with Bunny, and in the warren? Has he improved at all?”

A stopwatch appeared next to the sand pair and began to count time. Sandy held out his hands in a shrug. It was too soon to tell.

“I’m going to come see him,” she said. “I just - I’ll just need time to prepare myself.”

This wasn’t going to be easy to see and she was afraid she might break down - that would probably upset Jack even more.

“He’s going to need us - all of us - to be strong for him and focus on helping him recover,” she went on. “The last thing he needs of me getting upset seeing him like that.”

Sandy reached out to touch her shoulder lightly as she came to that conclusion.

“I’m alright, Sandy.”

She held her own hand to where Sandy’s hand touched her shoulder, looking at him with gratitude for the comfort, but then her expression hardened, and her hands clenched at her sides, the long talon-like nails held in such a way that suggested she wanted to sink them into flesh.

“Pitch is going to pay for this. I have all the mini-fairies on the lookout for him.”

It might not bring Jack back to himself, but if they could end Pitch, he could never hurt Jack like this again.

Sandy nodded in full agreement. He swirled his finger, and a little stocky North appeared, being scolded by a long-nosed hag. He had to go find the others.

Tooth nodded. “Let them know that Baby Tooth is willing to take over the Palace for me to go visit him. We should try to work out shifts. Make sure we all see him enough to help him. Bunny can let us know when he’s stable enough for visitors.”

With Bunny there, he wasn’t going to be alone, but there were different types of alone. She knew that well enough. After her mortal friends passed away, before the Man in the Moon had come to her, she’d always had her fairies, but she’d sometimes had very little connection to the outside world. She’d sometimes spent centuries at a time in the Tooth Palace, without visiting the children, or, well, anyone.

Now that she sometimes went out into the world again, to see the children herself, to spend more time with Jack and the other Guardians, she felt connected to the world again, more than she had in centuries. That’s what Jack’s presence on the team had prompted them all to do, to get more directly involved in the world, to get more involved with the children again.

They needed to make sure that he didn’t feel locked away and disconnected as he healed - at least until he was healthy enough to go out into the world again himself. They needed to remind him of what there was to get back to after he healed and hope against hope it’d help him heal all the faster.

* * *

Anansi didn’t react to the news the way Sandy had expected him to but then he so rarely reacted to things the way anyone expected.

When Sandy had shown up outside his cave - a place the Guardians knew they couldn’t just barge in on, Anansi had grabbed him by the arm.

“Come in. Quickly. I already know the news, my friend. I saw the threads and now I need to talk at you.”

Sandy, bobbing in place and faintly glowing as he followed Anansi through the tunnel deeper into his cave could only raise an eyebrow, wondering what exactly Anansi needed to talk at him for. He floated ahead so that he was side by side with the other myth, causing a question mark to curl above his head, glowing faintly in the dark.

“You see, I am currently at an impasse,” Anansi said. “When looking at my threads, I must think like myself and think outside myself all at once, and usually that allows me to figure out some measure of meaning that can help me guide the future. Right now, however... ”

The tunnel opened up to a cavern that was covered wall to wall with spider-webs. Endless knots and patterns and little pictures woven into them, reweaving themselves into new shapes due to the light breeze through the cavern.

“As you can see, the near future is going to be very...complicated. And so I must talk at someone else rather than just myself.”

Anansi shifted into his spider shape and climbed through the webs, carapace glittering in the golden glow that came from Sandy and the tiniest bit of moonlight that filtered down through the cave from few openings at the top.

Sandy floated up next to him, his expression mildly, curiously bewildered as he looked at the incomprehensible mass of web. Unlike his own functional pictograms, the webs were not meant to tell a story that anyone could decipher. Anansi alone understood their secret stories. He wove them, but unlike Sandy’s pictograms, they did not come from him, were not his voice. He did not control them.

“It’s all about the convergence of threads, that’s always the knottiest part - pun _so_ very obviously intended,” said Anansi, crawling along and looking at the knots. “Untangling the truth, teasing it out when there’s never any one truth at all.”

Many times there were multiple truths to be found in dreams, and sometimes, none at all. Sandy bobbed closer to a particularly large snarl, looking carefully, then pointing to it as he looked at Anansi, one eyebrow highly raised.

“Yes. Yes, yes, that is a thread that I’d overlooked? See? This is why it pays to another set of eyes alongside my sets of eyes.”

He crawled along, following the threads, to a larger cluster.

“Yes. Yes, it all comes down a single moment, but what moment that is or when it is, I can’t say. Soon, we’ll see. And after that moment will come the greatest threat the Guardians have ever faced, my friend. That much I am sure.”

Sandy’s expression was frankly bewildered. Pitch had smote him as close to death as any Guardian had ever come, and in his absence, wiped down their believers to only one - they had all been breaths from dying, if not for Jack.

“Yes, you see my concern?” Anansi said, hanging upside down from a tightly woven clump of web. “What threat could be greater than Pitch? And yet, see! One comes.”

He opened his two front legs like arms to the whole of the webs spun around them, the many clumps and snarls tangled within. Sandy looked at them, uncomprehending, but beginning to feel a trace of real fear.

“What I am also sure of is this, that much depends on only one of us. Just one.” Anansi pulled some webs this way and that to show a hidden pattern in the webs, shaped like a snowflake. “So much depends on his recovery, so much...”

Sandy’s head snapped to that thread. The spritely Jack image over his head and his distraught expression said everything. Jack was important to them, his recovery was important to them, and Jack of course was important to the world - but importance could not guarantee success. Or recovery.

Over Sandy’s head, sand folded in ocean waves and a woman rose out of it. Once, Yemaja had said that Jack was _the winter the world needed,_ the winter that brought re-creation as Old Man Winter before him had not. Sandy pointed to the thread, questioning. Just how much depended on Jack’s recovery after all?

“ _Lots,_ ” Anansi said, enigmatically, swinging from one side of the cave to the other, trailing a thread from his spinnerets. “He is connected to so much! Threats, possibilities, Pitch...others more threatening than Pitch...”

He paused, tilting at an angle on several layered webs that Sandy couldn’t see, reaching out and touching one thread with one black-shelled leg. The web vibrated, and Anansi stared at the pattern its vibrations became with all eight eyes without saying a word.

The threads wound together in a thick, heavy knot, and the vibration ran away from the heavy lump of thread, spreading into many different patterns arranged about the cavern...but the heavy lump hung motionless, unaffected by the motion of the threads. Unaffecting them.

The spider drew his leg back slowly, still silent.

Sandy looked up from the webs he had been studying, noticing the silence, and was unnerved by how long Anansi had been sitting, quiet and still. He couldn’t read Anansi’s expressions when he was in his spider form, so was that fascination in his quietude, or fear?

Sandy floated up next to Anansi and put his hand on one black-shelled leg. The eight eyes swiveled to Sandy, and then Anansi was suddenly motion and sound again.

“Something big is coming,” the spider said, but he swung away from the corner of the cavern with its hanging knot of web, to another pattern that spread like an explosion. “Something big is coming from our little Frost Spirit, but will it be for the good of the world, or for the bad? I cannot tell yet.”

Sandy could hear it in his voice, if not see it in his face. Anansi was troubled. More than he had been when Sandy entered the cavern. Then, he’d had the tone of a conspiracy theorist, connecting this thread and that threads to get a picture of the whole, worried, yes, but more than that, _curious._

Now, his voice trembled. It was more prominent than his curiosity. The spider was not just troubled. He was afraid.

Sandy floated next to him, a question mark and a spiderweb hovering over his head in gold sand.

“What have I seen? Oh - I am - I have told you -” Anansi’s voice had become a distracted murmur. “Maybe nothing. Maybe I have seen nothing, nothing at all. Maybe -”

He broke off, but by the bitterness in his tone, “nothing” meant something different from “nothing to worry about.”

“You have been alive far longer than I,” Anansi admitted, to Sandy. “You have come from farther than anyone has ever travelled to be here.”

It was true, but Anansi was not asking it as a question. Sandy waited patiently.

“There is no one left who knows the days of your youth, the world that was your home. And for longer than you have been a Guardian, you have been...you have Been. For longer than all of our lives put together, you have..."

The spider broke off, so much sadness in his tone that Sandy felt himself unexpectedly afraid for Anansi. He reached out, touched the spider again where his leg met his thorax, as if touching a human-shaped spirit on the shoulder.

Anansi turned eight glittering eyes on the Sandman again, asked, “How do you not die of loneliness, in those long stretches of time?”

This was not a mere question of curiosity. It was almost a plea for help.

“What would you do if all of this was taken from you? If you woke up one day, and...and this world that you had watched become, if even the Guardians were no more...how could that not break you, Sandman? How are you unbroken?”

The Sandman looked the spider in all eight eyes, brow knitted, and firmly repeated the image of the web and the question mark.

The spider told him what he had seen. And then the spider told him what that meant.

When he was done telling, Sandy still had his hands on the Guardian of Stories, but they were human shoulders he held, the better for Anansi to lean against Sandy, still and processing what the webs had told him.

“My,” said Anansi eventually, lifting his forehead from the Sandman’s shoulder. “We can’t have _two_ guardians breaking down at the same time, can we? Particularly not when I hardly deserve - it is hardly equal -”

Sandy kept his hand on Anansi’s shoulder, his look of sympathy unchanged. Trauma was not a contest.

While he was considering how to best depict this, Anansi seemed to snap back into himself, drawing away and back to his webs.

“There may be more,” he added, shifting back into his spider form, climbing up the webs. “I must pick apart every strand if I am to understand what’s to come nearly well enough to help us through it. Please give our Frost Spirit my regards. You will tell me when he is ready for visitors? Ah.” The spider waved a leg. “You - or the webs will.”

Sandy knew someone sinking into their work, pulling it like a blanket over their head to keep out fear, when he saw it. He turned to go, but got Anansi’s “Thank you,” soft as a whisper through webs, before he had entirely left the cave.

* * *

North was in his workshop when Sandy arrived. He was not working, yet, though the Cossack stood before his work bench. He leaned against it with both hands flat on the wood, as if holding himself up by it.

He turned, took one look at Sandy’s face and said, “Yes, my friend, I know.”

The old saint took two tumblers carved from ice, set them on his workbench, and filled them with vodka.

Sandy accepted his, but nursed it before downing the contents. North held his, too, leaning against the workbench.

“Baba Yaga, she said things to me before she let me go on my way, the same things I see in your face,” North said, looking into his vodka, before tossing the frosty shot back. “Jack is not well, is he?”

Sandy shook his head, his solemn acceptance matched only by his solemn sadness.

“Would he be better outside the Warren?”

Sandy shook his head _no_ again.

“I thought as much. Most of me wants still to swoop in, bring him to workshop for a good dose of cheer, and wonder, you understand? But not the me that has come back from Baba Yaga’s hut,” North went on, setting his ice tumbler down as Sandy sampled his drink. “Jack is not well, and the pole is many things, but a place to recover - perhaps is not first on the list.”

Not like the seat of all life was.

“Do you go to him?” North asked Sandy. “Each night?”

Sandy nodded, sipping his vodka slowly. In better times, he would make clear to North that his taste in the alcoholic kind of spirits was exquisite - but not now.

“Is the time right that I should come and visit?”

Sandy considered the idea, held out his hands in a _maybe_ gesture.

“If you will tell me when time is right, I will wait to go then,” North said.

Sandy still looked dubious. He pointed to North, shrugging. Jack might be ready to see North, but was North ready to see Jack?

“I told you, Baba Yaga - she has prepared me well. The wise old witch in the woods knows more about what Jack has gone through than any of us, I think,” North suggested, stroking his beard. “I will go, and if I am sad, then I am sad for good cause.” He shrugged, and reached for a snowglobe. “You will bring me word?”

Sandy nodded, drained his tumbler and put it back on the workbench. He had dreams to bring, and Jack to check in on.

North put his bottle away and leaned on his workbench again as the spirits did their work on his. The ice model of the toy helicopter that North had been working on at the height of summer when Bunny had first come to him, worried at Jack’s absence, still sat on the workbench. No one had touched it in all the months he’d been gone. It was urgent now, at the start of autumn, that he finish his designs, that he have so many more ready for the final stages of the year’s preparation for Christmas -

He would return to it. But for a moment he had to bow under the weight of the way the world had been when last he worked on this toy - the world that had a winter spirit that brought fun instead of fear, that had a sixth Guardian, that had a friend of his who was still whole, and now - now the whole world was a little bit more broken.

North’s heart was a little more broken, too. He had to acknowledge that, let himself accept it, before he could move beyond it, and pick up his tools again in a world that was a little sadder, with a heart that was a little heavier, to put wonder into that world in defiance of the way that it had been broken.

The moment passed. He picked up his tools, went back to work, and waited for Sandy’s word.

* * *

The blue paint looked almost right on the rocks and Jack felt the sorrow rising in him that it was a _lmost,_ not _just_ right, but the tears that welled up in his eyes didn’t fall yet.

The two pebbles, frozen together, made the shape right enough, and he had packed mud in to give it the curve shape - Jack was an artisan in frost, not in earth, and it was lumpy, but the doll hadn’t been made of ice. Had it been wood? Maybe it had been wood. But he had no knife. He’d never had a knife, never worked with one. Bunny certainly wouldn’t - shouldn’t - give him one. Bunny had given him paint, though, and there was earth all in the warren, and he could freeze earth together. Nothing was perfect. Nothing was ever perfect, simple, easy - nothing came with ease or joy like it had once, but this, the paint and the paper and the earth and the things around him, at least he had made these things. At least he could control them a little. Get them almost right. As almost-right as anything he made could be. _I make a mess of everything -_

“How’s it coming there, Jack?"

Jack didn’t jump, but looked up, disoriented. Bunny made a lot of noise - not loud noise, just enough so that Jack always knew where he was. Always Jack could catch a rustle in the grass, a scrape in the dirt or of chalk on stone, a snatch of humming, so that he knew Bunny was nearby, that it was Bunny, not...not anyone else. Rustling grass and chalk and a murmur here and there of songs were Bunny noises. But sometimes Jack might think the sound was coming from in front of him, but Bunny would be behind, sometimes he would look at a flower and remember the veined petals in the poisonous garden under the stars, sometimes he would think the shaking of a petal was not a dewdrop falling but the bloody, pale spiders about to climb back out -

Bunny hadn’t looked up from the slate on which he was writing, and Jack reached out, setting his little earthen figure on the stone, pressed his hand into Bunny’s fur, to make sure he was real. Soft and warm and an old, _old_ familiar. From back before Jack had lost his sense of safety. Back when things still came easy. Back to that same world again, but not the same Jack.

Bunny looked up, caught Jack’s eye and held it, putting his paw over Jack’s hand. “Hey. C’mere, sweetheart. What’s on your mind?”

He held out his arm for Jack to nestle under. Jack did, putting his arms around Bunny too tightly - if he held him tight enough, if he wasn’t real, maybe he could hold on tight enough to prevent him disappearing. If everything, if the Warren that was full of the quiet of things living, not things being dead, if Bunny - who always made sure Jack knew where he was, who never snuck up on Jack - if all of this was not real, maybe he could still prevent the illusion from vanishing if he held on tight enough.

Jack shook his head into Bunny’s fur. “This is real, right? I got out of the maze. You all came and got me. I froze the flowers but you’re not mad.”

“Yeah, it’s real.” That made the fourth time this week Bunny had reassured Jack of just that. “And nah I’m not mad. Remember? We talked about that.”

“Okay.”

When the Warren barely seemed real at least Bunny seemed realer. Jack had forgotten in the maze what soft rabbit fur felt and smelled like, but now that he was out of it he was sure his own mind couldn’t fake it. He couldn’t fake an accent, couldn’t fake all the songs that his friend had picked up over the ages, couldn’t fake comfort. The Warren had things he’d seen in the maze - flowers, sunshine, quiet, and it could have been a crazy memory, but Bunny had to be real. Bunny gave him comfort. Made him feel safe. Jack couldn’t make those things for himself.

The fear waned away for now. It would come back but Bunny would still be nearby when it did. He’d promised.

Jack reached for his earthen figure and, disoriented, knocked the pot of blue paint over.

It spilled across the grass and the wail burst out of him like a thing that had been living inside his throat, waiting to come out.

Bunny dropped his chalk and hopped in front of Jack. “No, Jack, look at me. Look at me. You’re all right - what is it?”

Jack just pointed to the spreading blue puddle, screaming. Nothing was easy. Nothing was ever easy. Nothing was ever easy but why couldn’t he at least have this be easy? Why couldn’t he just be able to remake what had burned up?

Bunny tucked Jack up in a hug, Jack’s sobs muffled by his fur. “It’s just paint, Jack, just paint. Calm down now. I can getcha some more.”

“Nothing’s ever _easy_!” Jack wailed, just so deeply, so thoroughly _tired_ of how uneasy everything was.

He screamed for a while longer as Bunny started rocking him, waiting the storm out. A few flakes of snow fell on them, and Bunny watched them carefully, bundling Jack tighter into his arms as the snow stuck to the grass.

These snowfalls never managed to match the one that had brought him racing home on the autumn equinox. There was no end to the things that set Jack’s tantrums off but as long as Bunny was there to console Jack through them, they never became deadly. When Jack paused to suck in a breath of air, Bunny started in on a lullaby in the quiet moment. “ _Ask not why the mountains rise -_ ”

Jack kept crying, but the snow lightened, stopped, and he grew quiet as the tantrum worked its way to a close. It took three repetitions of the lullaby for Jack to entirely calm down, but eventually he was still, the snow melted, soothing himself by stroking Bunny’s fur.

“‘ _Cause all the world’s in love with you,  
_ _Heaven longs to draw you nigh;  
_ _Yes all the world’s in love with you,  
_ _All the world and I.”_

With Jack quiet and still, Bunny finished the lullaby and pressed his nose to Jack’s forehead. “You wanna talk it out?” he asked, drawing back to look Jack in the eye again.

Jack didn’t meet his gaze. “I wanted to finish it _now_ ,” he said, of his little earthen figure, still upset but too tired out to cry about it any longer.

“I’ll get you some more paint,” Bunny reassured him, reaching for the figure. He turned it over, inspecting the two stones joined with clay in a curvy little shape. “What’s it gonna be?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Jack said, leaning away from it. “It won’t be right.”

“Yeah, but it’ll be yours. So of course it matters,” Bunny said.

“It won’t be right.” Why had he even tried, really? When he was only an artisan of frost, a novice in everything else. “I didn’t make the real one. The one before that North gave me -”

Bunny recognized the mimicry of the shape of a matryoshka doll. “Your center doll?” he asked, peering curiously.

“Pitch made me burn it,” Jack said. He tried to remember. Had the flame been blue, or green when it burned in the lead? “I just...I wanted it to exist again.”

Bunny wanted to throw Pitch in a pool of molten lead but now was not the time - and Jack was not the person to express this to. Instead he gathered Jack more closely into his arms.

“How about we get North to make you another?” he suggested. He wondered if this was a safe suggestion, but decided it was the right time to make it. “Would you like to go visit the pole, visit North again? I’ll take you there. We can both say g’day to the old blowhard.”

Jack thought back, back, frowned.

"Will I have to go in a sack?"

“What? No.” Bunny waited to see if Jack was a little more disturbed by that memory than he’d originally revealed, but Jack just seemed skeptical. “Not this time. We’ll take the tunnels, right, mate?” He paused, waiting for Jack’s response, getting none. “You can say no. You don’t have to go.”

“I -” Jack’s face twisted, suddenly, wracked with indecision. “I do - but - I don’t - It’s - the pole is so -”

The decision making was a little too much for him and Bunny watched in dismay as the frost spirit crumpled under the weight of it, his face suddenly streaming with tears.

“How about I decide then?” he suggested. Jack pressed his lips together, nodding fiercely, trying to hold in his wails. “We’ll go next week,” Bunny said. “How’s that? You can decide in that week if you want to go or not, but if you do, we’ll go then. Give you some time to prepare.”

This idea calmed Jack successfully, his tears slowing, though he still stared ahead with empty, sad eyes.

“In the meantime,” Bunny put his paw on Jack’s shoulder. “There’s more paint. I’ll help you make a temporary doll, right? Baby Tooth will let North know you’d like a new one, he’ll have one waiting when you decide to go. Whether that’s a week from now or later.”

He leaned on the _later._ Jack _had_ to come to a point where he was comfortable leaving the Warren, but when and how also had to be his choice. It just had to happen.

Jack nodded. “Okay.”

He waited calmly, quietly, staring sadly at the grass, while Bunny dipped up more blue paint from the river, and returned, to help him bring it to the right shade.

* * *

Tooth was the first to visit. She had been preparing to visit ever since Sandy brought her the word of Jack’s breakdown on the autumn equinox.

She’d had a feeling things had not been going well. Baby Tooth had been in the Warren nearly every moment since Bunny had taken Jack there, and Tooth could feel what her tiny, childlike self felt fairly well even across a great distance. And what Baby Tooth felt in the Warren had never been great - never particularly hopeful, which was such a saddening thing in the home of the Guardian of Hope.

She had been steeling herself all that time, bolstering herself on memories of Jack, whole and healthy, to prepare to see him still broken. Still broken, but at least now in a way that they understood. Pitch had tried to break Jack down until he was dependent as a child, and then chain that child to himself -

It was a sickening, infuriating thought. It sickened and infuriated her even after she’d given the thought time to sink in, and the queen of memories longed for Pitch Black to rear even a trace of himself where one of her fairies could see. She would be there faster than her fairies could swap a tooth for a quarter, and these days, her swords never left her hips.

That Pitch continued to be silent, that her fairies saw no sign of him, only gave her blood more time to boil. She’d already had to find time to let that fury out, and if the ages without practice had made her rusty at the swords - all that fury had found an outlet in practice, and she was not rusty anymore.

She had no pity in her heart to spare for Pitch but anyone who had seen her preparing to meet him again might have.

But she put her rage - and her swords - away before she went to see Jack. She left them both at the mouth of the tunnel that lead to the warren, at the feet of the sentinel egg that guarded the door and stood by to let her through. Bunnymund was near the door when she fluttered through.

“G’day Tooth,” he said, rising, putting down the slate he’d been crouched over when she came in. Tooth glanced at his work and saw, of all things, math scrawled across the stone in chalk - but this was hardly the time to be asking Bunny about new projects. “Baby Tooth said you might be by today.”

“How is he?” Tooth asked, both dreading and needing the answer.

Bunny sucked in a breath, let it out in a sigh, deciding how to answer. “He’s...calm today. It’s a calmer day than others.” He tilted his head towards a grassy knoll, where a low stone made a little cave that was still, somehow, full of the soft light that filled the warren. Tooth saw snow around the rim of the cave, icicles hanging from the overhanging stone, and the blue of Jack’s sweater inside. “He’s in his icebox. You picked an alright day to come and visit, as far as the days go.”

Tooth started to go to him, but Bunny caught her hand first. She looked back at him, caught the concern in his eyes.

“It’ll be good for him to see you, but are you - will you be all right?” Bunny asked. “It’s - this has to be harder for you than the rest of us.”

“Hard or not, I’m here for him,” she said, softly, calmly, and Bunny let her hand go. “He needs his good memories now, more than ever.”

She drifted over to where Jack was huddled in his little insulated cave, tracing his fingers across a big black stone, leaving patterns of frost.

“Hello Jack,” she said, trying to conceal the break in her voice. He looked up, sharply, like a kicked animal, but the wariness on his face faded slightly - not entirely.

“Baby Tooth said you were coming,” he said, and started to put out his hand, hesitating before truly reaching for her.

Tooth finished the gesture, sliding her delicate hand under Jack’s larger, rougher one. The touch reassured Jack finally, and he lost his hesitance, relaxing and lifting her hand, studying her nails like he was using them to reassure himself she was real.

“You’re so pretty,” he said, clearly, as if this reassured him. ”Even your fingernails are pretty.”

“Thank you, Jack,” Tooth said, but her heart was not in accepting the compliment when the way he still held himself, closed in, small, as deep in the cool cave as possible, put more fissures in her heart.

“Nothing was pretty in the maze,” he said, almost conversationally. “No -” he paused, remembering. “There were pretty things. But not you. Pretty things that would turn ugly when I looked closely. But even your fingernails are pretty,” he repeated. “Even your fingernails.”

 _I shouldn’t have come,_ Tooth thought, but she clamped down on that thought. Her heart was breaking, but Jack’s heart and mind had been broken, and he needed her to forget her own sadness and be strong for a little longer.

But Jack looked up and caught sight of her face before she could school it, and his face fell.

“You’re sad,” he said. “I - please don’t be sad -”

He dropped her hand and reached for her cheek, his fingertips brushing over her feathers, and Tooth couldn’t stop a tear or two from welling up.

“Yes,” she admitted, because admitting it a little would let enough pressure off her sadness that she could work around it. “You know what I like to do when I’m sad, Jack?”

He grinned at her hugely, a tiny, tiny bit of his old sense of humor bubbling to the surface. “Look at my teeth?”

Tooth didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. She put her hands on Jack’s shoulder’s, looking down, shaking her head to clear - what? Sadness or humor or both maybe. She wiped her eyes. “Yes, Jack, but I like to - I like to revisit my favorite memories, too,” she said.

“Oh. Okay. What are they?”

“My favorite memory from very recently,” she said, “was when you and I were collecting teeth together the first time.” The memory did help lift her spirits.

“You flew face first into a billboard,” Jack said, “But you were okay so it was funny.” His grin faltered. “You were okay right? I’m remembering that right?”

“Yes, you’re remembering that right,” Tooth said.

“It was so long ago.” Jack suddenly looked down, rubbing his eyes. “Can’t - where. Hard to remember.”

It had been only a handful of years before. As good as a moment ago to Tooth. She could have walked him through that night, second by second.

So she did. All the pranks that the boys had played on each other as they helped her, everything she’d felt and seen that was wonderful and delightful, encouraging Jack all the time to pick out his own special memories of that night. Pranks she hadn’t witnessed. The things he’d seen and felt that meant the most to him.

The prompting made it easier for Jack to remember and he seemed much more relaxed, much more at ease by the time they were done reminiscing. He held her hand in his, but wasn’t checking it constantly as if to make sure it was real.

“What other memories help you when you feel sad, Jack?” she asked.

Jack shrugged. “Hard to remember,” he said. He looked at Tooth. “You’re sad. You’re sad I’m like this,” he said, a little note of bitterness in his voice. “I’m sad I’m like this too.”

Tooth put her free hand on his cheek. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, calmly, though of course it did, very much. “If you’re having trouble remembering, I’ll come back again soon with another good memory for you,” she said. “Tomorrow, even. Every day if you want.”

“I want that,” Jack said. “But you’re _sad.”_

“It’s all right,” she insisted. She smiled, put on a brave face. “No matter what happens, Jack, we have our memories and they’re stronger than what’s here right now. That’s why I protect them.”

She squeezed his hands. No matter if those memories were all she would ever have - at least she had them.

“I’m going to help you keep them. I promise.”

* * *

It was noontime when the Spider crept into the Warren.

The sight of a spider the size of a horse would have sent many brave people screaming for many understandable reasons, but Jack didn’t scream when he saw Anansi. He did run, though.

Bunny was meditating when he heard Jack running and cracked one eye open just in time to brace himself as Jack crashed into him, wrapping his arms tight around Bunny’s waist and burying his face in Bunny’s fur.

“What’s the matter, something spook ya?” Bunny asked, but Jack just moaned softly and kept his face hidden. The scent of spider reached Bunny, and his confusion cleared. He spotted Anansi in time to see the spider twist into the shape of a man, and waved.

“G’day, you eight-legged bounce, what brings you ‘round these parts?” he called, patting Jack on the back and waving to Anansi. His tone was light and friendly, but his expression said, “if you say anything to upset Jack, I will rip off your extra legs and beat you with them.”

Anansi lifted his human hands in surrender. One held a small bag. “I come in peace, old friend! Look, I even brought a present.”

“I don’t want any stories,” Jack whimpered, too softly for anyone without rabbit ears to hear.

Bunny patted him on the back. “Don’t worry about that, Jack. Looks like you get candy instead. Am I right, Anansi?”

“Indeed you are,” said Anansi, tossing the burlap sack up and down as he ambled over to Jack and Bunny. “There is a grandmother in Ghana whose candied ginger is simply paradise on Earth.”

Jack had looked up just enough to watch Anansi with one blue eye, still clinging to Bunny even as his gaze locked on the candy. He hesitated, and Anansi crouched down, holding the bag out a little farther.

“Do you remember the game with the Groundhog and the Leprechaun? I heard you say candied ginger was your favorite.”

Jack hadn’t heard Anansi speak so gently since the spider had given him a rare, comforting story after he almost died fighting the fire-breathing Grootslang beneath Botswana.

“No tricks,” the Spider promised, still in that gentle tone. “And no scary stories today. On my honor. Which, contrary to myth, I do sometimes have.”

Jack _was_ partial to candied ginger. He took the bag, slowly, and when it stayed a bag in his hand, he let go of Bunny but still leaned against him as he tugged it open and pulled out a sugared ginger piece.

“I thought I might take it to Kilimanjaro, to freeze it, but it would have started to thaw by the time I arrived,” Anansi went on, as Jack lessened his lean on Bunny, who still had a paw on his shoulder. “And you are more than capable of freezing your own snacks anyway.

“He wouldn’t trick you on this one,” Bunny reassured him. “Candied ginger is about the only thing he always takes seriously.”

“Thank you,” Jack said, nibbling on a piece of candy. It _was_ good, easily the best candied ginger he’d had in his long, long life. “It’s good,” he announced.

Anansi’s smile was unusually reserved. “I’m glad you like it. How have you been, Jack?”

“Good,” said Jack, around the candy. He continued nibbling, watching Anansi carefully, wondering what else to say. “I painted those,” he finally said, pointing to sheets of paper that were drying on the grass. “And I’m painting one now."

“Do you want to go back to painting it again?” Bunny asked, patting his back.

“Yes,” Jack said, like he was admitting a secret.

“You can do that,” said Bunny. “You can tell him that. You don’t have to wait for one of us to ask, all right Jack?”

“I don’t have to,” Jack repeated but the permission seemed to reassure him still. “So I can go now?”

“Yeah mate, you can go if you want."

“Okay. Buh-bye. Thanks for the candy,” Jack said, picking out another piece to nibble and trotting with relief back to his art supplies.

“That was a nice gesture,” Bunny said, to Anansi, watching Jack go.

“I know you expected trickery and games,” said Anansi, without judgement, or resignation. “But I can see he has been tricked enough already. There is nothing that boy needs from me but a steady supply of candy.”

Bunny raised an eyebrow in approval. “You took the time to think of that.”

“I have been,” the spider chose his words carefully, “harsh to him before he was breaking. But I am not a blind monster.” He tilted his face towards Bunny, blinked, and six more eyes opened in his human face, black and staring. “You of all people should know that.”

Bunny snorted, with an edge of amusement as Anansi batted his spider eyes, all of them thickly lashed. “What, should I somehow not know you well enough not to know what to expect? How exactly could I have missed that by now?”

Anansi blinked his spider eyes away with a sigh. “Will I ever get one past you, old friend?” he asked, innocently.

Bunny just snorted again, still with the edge of amusement, as he watched Jack scribbling away on his paper, popping another piece of genuine grandmother’s candy into his mouth.

Another person less well acquainted with the Guardian of Hope might not have been able to interpret the twitching of his ears and the way he stood, arms crossed over his chest, as signs of deep anger. Jack wouldn’t have been able to catch them, not past Bunny’s calm bearing.

But the old spider did, and he said suddenly, as if out of nowhere, “You know, perhaps I will never get anything past you, but you must be aware by now, you have gotten things past yourself, trying to outthink me.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. I have a truth to tell you,” Anansi said, and the word “truth” made Bunny turn his gaze away from Jack, raising his eyebrows with skepticism. “You remember when I came to see you, after the Old Man. Just before we stopped speaking for that long time -”

Bunny crossed his arms, releasing a deeply held sigh. “Is now really the time for this?” he asked, a touch of impatience in his tone.

“Yes,” Anansi affirmed, and paused. The pause gave Bunny time not to protest, and to shrug his shoulders in as close as Anansi was going to get to a ‘Go on.’ “You remember what I said, when I came to see you in this place -” he paused, casting his eyes around the green, growing Warren, his tone lilting as it grew into a story. “When it was so bare, with you the only life left in it?”

“Of course I remember.” Bunny cut in. He looked directly at Anansi for the first time. A fierce ember, old, that had yet never died, was in his gaze. “Did you lie to me? When you said you didn’t know what was coming?”

“No,” Anansi said, frank, unruffled. “No, I did not lie. I even told you a truth. But it was not _all_ of the truth.”

“Then tell me all of the truth.”

“You asked me,” Anansi went on, in his storytelling lilt. “If I had foreseen that Old Man Winter would try to put an end to spring forever. You asked, without asking, if I had known that everyone you called your family, everyone you loved, was going to die. And I told you I had foreseen that there would be an Occasion and that you would rise to it.”

Anansi paused for effect.

“Get on with it, you eight-legged bounce.”

“You always ruin my timing,” Anansi sniffed. “You could say I did lie,” he admitted. “I did not foresee _an_ Occasion. I foresaw many.”

Bunny looked away from the spider, saying nothing.

“You know,” Anansi went on, musing - “It is a strange twist of fate. We have given our lives to the children, all six of us, and yet of the six of us, only you and I ever had children ourselves.” Anansi glanced at him as he went on. “And I am the only one who was granted time with his.”

Bunny’s only response was to sigh out deeply, brushing a paw over his face, hiding his eyes only a moment before smoothing back the fur over his forehead and down one long ear. Anansi looked back at Jack as he said nothing.

“But I could not do this,” he admitted, clicking his teeth together like pincers, so softly that only rabbit ears could hear. “My children came to me for jokes. I gave them lessons, not comfort. I never nursed a child back from an edge, much less one this perilous. I could not do this,” he repeated. He turned to Bunny. “And I did not foresee it - just as I didn’t foresee the Old Man’s plans. Just as I have not foreseen all of the great victories you have been responsible for against the evil that creeps in the dark - but my friend, do you know, since the time when you were young and I was less old, when you were still mortal and your friends still called you by your name, I have always believed that you would rise to many occasions. This story is still fragile but it is so much stronger now than it was a very short time ago.” Anansi looked long over Jack again. “For once, my friend, I believe I am the one who can bring you hope.”

Bunny was silent for so long that Anansi huffed impatiently.

“You might say ‘thank you, o Great and Wise Anansi,’” the Great and Wise Anansi prompted. “Especially now that I am remembering why we did not speak for so long.” He crossed his arms, pouting. “You were so _mean_ to me.”

Bunny snorted at Anansi’s sudden, injured petulance. “You’ll have to find it in your heart - spiders have hearts, right? - to forgive me. I was having a very bad day.” He laughed again, as if he’d been infected by humor.

“Ah, you were,” Anansi admitted, his petulance fading. “And you knew my reputation for half-truths, even then.”

Bunny snorted. “And let me guess, you never found it in your heart to forgive me for it.”

“Worse,” Anansi said, crossing his own arms peevishly. “I found it in my heart to admire you.”

Bunny glanced at him, his smirk betraying just a little bit that he was touched.

“Even as you grew so very boring,” Anansi went on. Bunny punched him lightly.

“I mean it, though,” the spider went on, rubbing his arm. “We tore so many fools up one side and down the other - I would be lying if I said I didn’t miss that. But this -” Anansi shrugged at Bunny. At the Warren. Vaguely at Jack. “This is more important. And I’m glad you’re around to help him through it. No one lives who knows better than you how to turn suffering into strength.”

Bunny sighed, as if exhaling the last of their conversation.

“Right then,” he said. “Since you’re in a truthful mood - I’ve got a question. About a story a lot older than me.”

“A lot of stories are older than you,” Anansi responded, without commitment.

“It’s about the Light of Eos,” Bunny said, and he gestured vaguely at the whole of the warren. The diffuse light that illuminated it softly beamed on the greenery, warm and gentle as ever, beaming from the plants themselves. “Just - tell me, if there was a story going about it now, what would it say - ?”

He trailed off, as if uncertain just how specific his question could, or should be.

“Oh, _that_ story,” Anansi said, following Bunny’s glance around the Warren. “Now that is an old story indeed, a long time in the setting up - one which I am not even close to knowing the end of.”

He paused, for dramatic effect.

“But I think I say a bit of how its next chapter goes. It begins with an idea -” the Spider’s eyes had grown distant. “That suggests a weapon.”

Bunny nodded.

“Good to hear,” he said, looking at Jack, glad that the frost spirit had not heard.

* * *

When Anansi had gone, Bunny returned to the section of the Warren that functioned as his workshop to finish an experiment. 

Jack’s easel was set up nearby, but the frost spirit had never over the weeks in the Warren taken interest in the work Bunny was doing on the wide, flat stone that made his workfloor, by the bubbling hot springs and the steam vents that gave him heat when he needed them. Usually, when Bunny was at work, this part of the Warren was rich with the smell of chocolate and caramel and confectionary wonders only the most imaginative children could dream of, but sometimes, as now, the smell from the workspace was not heavenly. Today, the only smell came from a few pine branches, burning with a bright, small flame on the wide flat stone. Strange symbols surrounded the little fire, inscribed in chalk chipped straight from the Warren’s walls. The corner of the stone was covered with more chalkmarks - spell circles and calculations, scrawled notes and sketched illustrations that, for days, had been of no interest to Jack. 

Bunny had pored over them constantly when Jack was occupied - but now, he was painting.

The eggshell was as detailed and ornate as any egg he’d ever hand-painted to be the jewel of the year’s egghunt. However, the colors he’d brewed to paint it were dark evergreen and bright, burning fire - not the soothing floral palette which the Warren produced without influence. He painted the burning evergreen over an eggshell that had been carved, almost too shallowly for the eyes to see, with symbols and patterns much reflected in the chalk notes scrawled across the stone.

When the eggshell was done, he hopped over to the burning pine branches and looked over the chalk notes surrounding it, and, with a cautious glance at Jack - the boy was still absorbed in his crayon drawing - began muttering in a language that none but him had spoken in a thousand years.

The light left the fire in a flickering stream, feeling its way straight to the tiny hole drilled in the small end of the eggshell. It coiled inside the shell like an animal curling into a burrow, and as the last gleam of light vanished inside, Bunny pressed his thumb over it and reached for the sealing wax he used to cap his egg bombs. Over this, he laid a piece of thick, dark leaf, adhering to the sealing wax and blending into the evergreen paint that bloomed into fire on the egg’s surface.

The wax held, and he lifted the egg for inspection. Deep inside, past the layers of paint and the carved eggshell, yes - a spot of brightness glowed, illuminating the shell gently from within. in front of him, the pine branches still burned. But now the fire danced with no light.

With a sinking sensation he observed the flickering, near-invisible shimmer that remained of the fire. It smoked and danced as usual, but the only indication that it burned was the smoke and heat and the blackening of the pine. It set his teeth on edge. A dry tinder burning with this same lightless fire would be nearly invisible.

Not the weapon he wanted - but a byproduct weapon of the one he’d just invented, which could hurt a lot more people than the weapon he’d wanted in the first place.

He swept a waiting pile of dirt over the lightless fire and stamped it down thoroughly, to make sure it was truly banked, then opened a tunnel beneath the whole pile. With another glance at Jack to make sure he was still playing, he dropped the egg down the tunnel, and observed the flash of light in the dark as all of the fire’s light burst free of the broken shell in a single blast.

A small flash, but so bright, a few minutes worth of light in a single instant. A flashbomb made from a light that had been burning longer would have an intensity far greater.

Bunny had never had so many mixed feelings about an experiment being such a success.

He stood, stamping the tunnel closed on the remains of his work, and twirled the chalk in his fingers, sighing as he looked up at the Warren around him in thought, when a sudden command caught his attention.

“ _ **Wait**_ _.”_

The word, spoken in two voices, halted him still as a statue. 

He turned around. Two land formations that had not been there a moment ago stood at the edge of his worktable - a spire of rock and a mound of soil. The rock formation had erupted through the grass in the Warren, striated in layers from ochre gold to deep brick red, as if it had been building up for thousands and thousands of years. Its shape curved upwards, smooth and flowing, as if the wind had been shaping it for a hundred thousand more.

Beside the spire, the mound of rich black soil bloomed with vines and flowers. They grew richer, thicker, fuller by the second, yet still the black depths of the soil they grew in was visible. 

Bunny knelt before both of them, his expression resigned. “All right, I know this looks like a bad idea, but I have good reasons.”

“ _It looks as though you’re capturing light as a tool for force,”_ spoke the black mound in a voice as lush as the greenery growing from her. “ _Can you really be thinking to use the Light of Eos as a weapon?_ ” 

“ **She was never one for violence.** ” The red rock spire’s voice rumbled the ground faintly beneath his feet. “ **What do you think making a weapon of her remains will accomplish** _?”_

“Pitch Black needs to die,” Bunny cut in, still kneeling respectfully, with the hesitance of one speaking to his superiors - and prepared to defy them, but hoping not to have to do it. “He’s gotten too dangerous and if Eos’ light can help -”

“ _What makes you think it will? I must have evidence. Making this weapon will be like plucking a leaf from a tree that will never grow back,”_ the black mound warned. _“The world is already less rich without her. If you do this, your reason must justify making it that less richer.”_

“ **Who is Pitch Black again?** ” said the rock spire, in a subdued thrum, as if she were whispering to the black mound.

“The Nightmare King,” Bunny explained. “He’s out of control, and he travels by shadows.”

“ **Oh, him,”** the rock spire responded. **“The one who crashed with the Sandman.”**

“That’s the one.”

“ **I never liked him.”**

“If Eos’ light can slow him down long enough, I need to try -”

“ **You have duties to the world, not just the children who live on it** ,” the red rock said, her voice grown suddenly stern. **“I may not like your enemy, but your duty does not include throwing the light of the world away on a personal grudge.”**

The black mound, too, spoke with astonished sorrow. “ _Have you considered what Eos would have thought of the last of her beloved followers making a weapon of her remains?_

“ **We have not restricted you from much, but this is dangerously close to a desecration.** ”

Their accusations touched a nerve - one that made Bunny drop his gaze to the ground, gritting his teeth. But he rallied, standing up from his kneel with his expression set.

“It’s not _only_ personal. Pitch Black woke up Old Man Winter,” he said, “Not the first time, but recently. He gambled the world to get someone he wanted.” He paused, his next justification grating on his pride. “And he almost killed me, a few years back. He had all the kids but one not believing in all the Guardians. I don’t think for a minute he woulda let me live after the others’ faded, if Jack hadn’t done for him.” He paused. “I know - hurting him wouldn’t have been Eos’ first choice, but this isn’t his first chance. We’ve had to defeat him too many times, and the cost has already been too high. Each time we haven’t done ‘im in, he’s done worse than before.”

He trailed off, but the silence from the visiting deities spoke volumes as to the strength of his argument.

“ _He almost killed you?_ ” the black mound spoke with a note of concern.

“ **And you have shown him mercy since?** ” the rock spire added, her tone dry.

He’d convinced them. Bunny relaxed. “You see what I’m getting at. He’s too dangerous to let live anymore. But I don’t know if we can kill him by the usual means - ”

“ _Even so, Eos was not warlike_ ,” the black mound said. “ _Your only suspicion her light might harm him is based on his shadowy nature_.”

“Bunny, am I hallucinating now?” Jack suddenly said from behind the pooka, sounding more than a little alarmed. He was clinging to his staff as he leaned against it as if trying to keep a better grip on reality by keeping a tight grip on it. “The dirt is talking.”

The tension in the Warren shifted as all three speakers turned their attention on Jack. Something in the air made it clear that the faceless earth formations were, in their way, looking right at him.

“ _Why is_ he _here?_ ” asked the black mound, her tone curious, not accusing. “ _You let him in?”_ her tone suggested, not that she disagreed, but that she hadn’t expected it.

Jack had lost much of his ability to read tone, though. He gripped his staff more tightly. “Bunny, tell her I don’t have to leave. I don’t have to leave, right?”

Bunny loped over immediately to reassure Jack, his manner all at once casual and good humored. “Ah, nobody’s sayin’ that.” He put his hand against Jack’s face, smiling to comfort the boy. Jack didn’t smile back, but he leaned into the touch like an animal seeking comfort. Bunny glanced back at the earth formations. “Look, ah, all due respect, he’s having enough trouble reading people right now when they have faces. D’you think you could -”

“ **Of course.”**

“ _Just a moment.”_

The black mound of soil compressed, piece by piece, the vines upon her weaving into loose robes around the shape of a woman. Vines fell from her head like dreadlocks, flowers blooming in them to ornament her, pink and white and yellow stark against her green robes and skin as black as the soil that she had been a moment ago.

The rock spire cracked, pieces shearing off until it too took the shape of a woman, her dark skin smeared with red dust, her body thick with muscle like rolling hills. She reached up to smooth the last of the crags from her complexion, leaving white dust from the limestone that her hands had been on her bare scalp in a bright handprint.

Both women stood tall and dark, and there was something in their faces that suggested relation - and immense, uncountable age.

“Oh, okay,” Jack said distantly, as if a talking rock and talking dirt made much more sense when they could turn into people.

Bunny gestured, respectfully towards the earth women. “Jack, these are the Mothers. Gaia,” He nodded to the former black mound of soil, “and Terra.” He nodded to the painted woman who had been a rock. “You know them. Mother Nature and Grand-Mother Earth.”

Jack waved in the half-hearted way children do when they don’t feel well and other things are better distractions from it than what they’re doing at the moment, then pushed his hand through his hair, which was more unkempt than ever.

“Bunny, I broke my purple crayon,” he said to the pooka, sounding absolutely devastated over the fact. “I sat on it.”

The Mothers exchanged a glance with their newly human faces. Terra spoke, again whispering to her daughter. “What is a crayon?”

Gaia shrugged.

“Ah, no worries,” said Bunny, patting Jack on the back. “I’ll get you a new one in a tic. Can y’wait that long?”

“But my picture -” Jack protested, his voice growing waterier. “If I don’t have the purple, it won’t be right and I want - it was going - almost done -”

Gaia and Terra, now that they had faces, were of course easier to read, and they both looked bewildered. Gaia’s expression was particularly concerned.

She stepped past her mother, flowers growing in her wake. “This isn’t the first time we’ve met,” she said, to Jack. “Do you remember? It was not very long ago - maybe a hundred years or so. I wore this face. Much poison had been dumped into a river and we saw each other as I tried to purify it - you froze it in place, and I was too hurried to thank you. Do you remember that? I do.”

A hundred years or so ago, to Jack, now seemed much longer ago since his time in the dark. He shook his head wordlessly, then leaned into Bunny, hiding his face insecurely in the rabbit’s fur.

Bunny tucked his arm around Jack’s shoulder, gently, patting him on the back. Mother Nature gave him a questioning look, and he met her gaze. “He’s ah...recovering from something,” Bunny said, not wanting to mention Pitch where Jack could hear. “I’ve been taking care of him. Some days’re better than others.”

Gaia looked back at Terra, the glance between them ripe with understanding.

Terra crossed her powerful arms in the background as Gaia knelt before Jack again. “I am happy to see you again,” she said, her tone grown coaxing and motherly. “It’s not many winter spirits with hearts warm enough to be welcome in my home.”

“This is Bunny’s home,” Jack said, removing his face from Bunny’s fur long enough to deliver the correction.

He kept a sliver of blue eye on her, though, after he’d nestled back into Bunny’s fur, so he saw her smile gently.

“Bunnymund is the protector of spring and this is where spring was born,” she explained. “Who do you think gave birth to it?”

That question struck Jack, enough that he gave Gaia his full gaze. “You?” he suggested.

“That’s right,” she said, warmly, smiling in a way that called to mind the memory of Yemaja. And, deeper down, Jackson Overland’s mother. “And all life on this world was born from spring. Jack Frost - are you ice and moonlight given a soul or are you descended from me?”

“I was human,” Jack said slowly. “But then I died. But I saved my sister so the Man in the Moon brought me back like this.”

“Did he now?” Gaia looked at her mother. “I had no idea he could do that.”

“The Man in the Moon is young but his power is great,” Terra mused, curiosity cracking crows’ feet around the corners of her eyes.

“Have you liked being Jack Frost?” Gaia went on, turning back to Jack.

Jack opened his mouth to answer and found that he didn’t have an answer. Not one that came easily, anyway.

On the one hand, he had died that day in the pond and if not for his second life, there was so much he would have missed out on. He never would have met Bunny and the other Guardians. He never would have danced on the winter wind or brought joy to children with every snow day or watched countless sunrises and sunsets over nearly every inch of the world. He would have never met Jamie and been believed in.

What kind of life was one where you died young and never got to see the salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia after it rained? Or the snow-dusted mountains of the Alps? Or the view of Paris from the very top of the Eiffel Tower at night?

On the other hand, he’d suffered through three hundred years of agonizing loneliness and confusion. And then there had been the maze -

“I don’t know,” Jack said carefully. “I used to, even when I was alone, but now I’m not so sure. But I’m trying to like it again.”

She crouched before him, her immense height easily meeting his eyes at a crouch, resting her chin in her hand. “I hope you enjoy it again soon,” she murmured. Her eyes glanced over his face, like she was only just now recognizing his features, as if he were someone she had met a long time ago - longer than the day at the river - and was just now recollecting. “May I ask you another question, Jack? Or do you want to go back to your art?”

“I can answer another question,” said Jack. His urgency to return to his art was perhaps not totally doused, but he seemed not to find it as pressing now that he’d begun speaking to Gaia.

“Did you like being human?”

This one was easier to answer. Jack nodded.

“Sometimes it was hard, but I had my mom and my sister and we used to play all the time. Me and my sister. Winter was always my favorite because we’d go ice skating, but I really liked the spring, too.” He seemed to want her to know that he held all that she had done in high regard. “My sister always wanted me to help her make chains of flowers for her hair.”

“I’m glad to hear that. I know living isn’t always easy for mortals.” Her eyes were soft and kind. “I see it all the time. I saw it with you,” she said, her gaze confident as she looked at his face, as if she had finally placed him. “With your sister. And with your mother. Forgive me for not recognizing you for your mortal face sooner, Jack. I don’t always remember right away, but I never forget the faces of my children.”

Jack was quiet for a little while, before finally asking. “So...so even if I hadn’t become Jack Frost, I still would’ve mattered?”

“Of course,” she said, mildly surprised that it was a question. “You did matter. The world was richer for having you in it - and it’s even richer now, with you immortal in it.”

Jack could only smile at that, in a way that suggested he was out of practice. Then awkwardly, he leaned towards her and lightly butted his head against her shoulder, hoping to get a hug without starting one. When she wrapped her arms around him, vines tightening comfortingly, he relaxed into it and wrapped his arms around her.

“Thank you for making all the nature in the world, it’s really nice.”

“Thank you for being the winter the world needs,” she said, tucking him into her arms and pressing her cheek against his forehead. “My nature would not do nearly so well without you.”

While Jack was tucked in Gaia’s hug, Bunny had darted off, fast as he could. He was back as Jack looked for him.

“Here ya’ go, mate, found that crayon after all.”

“Oh. Thanks.” Jack took the crayon, inspecting it for a moment. His smile was satisfied. “I have to go finish my picture now or I might not get it right,” he said, untangling himself from Gaia’s vines, as she gathered them up to release him. “But thanks for coming to visit.”

“It was my pleasure,” Gaia said. She reached to pat him on the head, but stopped midway, seeing Bunny frantically waving a “no” sign at her behind Jack. She paused for a brief second, before putting her hand on Jack’s shoulder instead. “I hope I see you around the world soon.”

“Yeah, maybe,” he said with a noncommittal shrug before dashing off to his easel.

They waited in silence for several moments, before they were sure he was too far to hear them

Grandmother Earth broke the silence, her eyes narrowed. “He -” she pointed after Jack, who had tottered away to scribble furiously on his drawing, so furiously and intently that he looked as if he’d break the crayon again - “tricked Old Man Winter into taking the Enkidu Oath?”

“Stonkered him fairly at the challenges of winter,” Bunny corrected, touched with pride at the memory. “And gathered the shards of the Snow Queen’s mirror after. He’s -” he paused, correcting himself. “He _was_ like a brother to me.”

“And Pitch Black did this to him?” said Gaia, the motherly concern gone from her eyes - replaced by the sternest, quietest, most maternal of rage, like the whisper of wind that comes before a hurricane.

“Got it in one,” Bunny growled.

“He was brave, when last I saw him,” said Gaia, “Sure of himself. He brought the winter spring needed to flourish.” The vines growing as her hair curled tightly. “Eos would have loved him.”

“She would have,” Bunny agreed, his growl gone. His voice had softened almost beneath the point of hearing.

“She would weep to see him now,” Gaia said.

“Kill Pitch Black,” Terra pronounced, blunt as an avalanche.

“I need no more convincing,” agreed Gaia.

Bunny did not react to the news with enthusiasm.

“I’m not gonna throw it around carelessly,” he said, once again thinking of the weapon to be made. “I only want to make one.”

“Then you use it right,” Terra said. “When he is as close to defeated as you can get him without striking a final blow. And when that final blow can be struck -”

“Only then,” Gaia insisted. “But only then, don’t hesitate.”

“He has been a blight on my soil since he fell here with the Sandman,” Terra pronounced. “There is a place for fear in this world, but he has overstepped himself every chance he gets. ”

“While there is life, there will always be someone to take up a burden laid down,” Gaia murmured. “Perhaps his successor will be one more appropriate to the role. As Jack was more appropriate for winter than the old man.”

She watched after Jack a moment longer before inhaling deeply.

“I must go now,” she said. “A hurricane is brewing off Cote D'Ivoire. If I don’t temper it, your work will be harder this year.”

Bunny bent the knee, bowing in farewell, suddenly formal. “Thank you, Mother. I wish the circumstances were better, but it’s an honor t’see you again.”

“I wish they were, too,” Gaia said. Because Bunny was looking at the grass, and not at Gaia, he didn’t see her look of slight uncertainty, or see her reach her hand out as if to give him a comforting touch. She pulled it back as Bunny rose, all business, to repeat the bow and the honorific to Terra.

The Mothers sank back into the soil.

Bunny took an unpainted egg from the nearest blooming flower and returned to his work, carving with his claws first a great circle for the sun in the shell of the egg.


End file.
